Rating: 
Summary: I Stand Corrected
Review: I have given some of Reinfeld's books, published under Fireside Chess Library, very poor reviews. Books like this one that he published under other publishers are dramatically better! Almost like two different people wrote them.
His book The Complete Chessplayer was one of the best I have ever read. This book is also a great collection of chess puzzles. I have other chess puzzle books that claimed to have been checked for accuracy by computers but are still not as accurate as this one. This book was written before computer assisted analysis. This book reflects much hard work and attention to detail. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to sharpen his or her tactical ability.
The main drawback to this book for most players will be that it was written in descriptive notation. If you are a young player than this may slow you down. If you are comfortable with the older style notation then there is no reason to pass up this great book.
Rating:
Summary: Cheap Checkmating Problem Book
Review: A good book that's well worth your money...Anyway this book has 1001 different diagrams that act as puzzles for you to solve. They all ask you to find the checkmate. Sometimes it's in two moves, others are in 5. So some of them are very hard, and others are really easy. There are different chapters too. Including: Queen Sacrifices, Checkmate Without the Queen, Storming the Castled Position, Harrying the King, Discovered Check and Double Check, Pawn Promotion, A Variety of Motifs, and finally Composed Problems. A variety of motifs makes it so that you have no idea what kind of checkmate it is (i.e. whether its a queen sacrifice, or pawn promotion, or both, etc.). This makes it so that you have to use all the previous chapters to help you. All the solutions are provided in the back too. But their in Descriptive Notation which is a lot harder, more complicated, and longer than Algebraic Notation. So that is a big con. But you really shouldn't be looking at the answers that much, so it's not that much of a problem. This book will also require a lot of time and work. It took about 5 hours just to finish the Queen Sacrifices (276 Problems). Look at it this way. Each problem will probably take about a minute or more. So that's 1001 minutes. Which is about 16 and a half hours! Sure there are a lot of books that take longer. But this one is just problems. It would be like taking a 16 hour test! That's if you did it all at once, which I highly don't recommend. But this book definitely will help you see mating patterns a lot easier and will improve your chess immensely. Also by the time you finish it the first time, you'll have forgot the exact answers to all the diagrams, so you can go through them all again, and see how much you improved!PROS:
Very Cheap
A lot of Problems to Solve
Very Small and Light, makes this book a great choice for travel
You'll Appreciate it When you finish this book CONS:
Its in Descriptive Notation
Can Get You Really frustrated
Can Get Really Boring Summary: A good solid problem book. Will keep you busy for many hours at a low cost. Great to do in the car/plane rides to your next tournament. Good luck finishing it though.
Rating: 
Summary: 1001 Brilliancies and Sacrifices
Review: As a USCF 1267 rated player, I have found this book opened up my mind to tactical ideas I need to advance in chess. The examples used by the author range from very simple to complex, offering the reader a myriad of levels of difficulty. When I review the games I play, I try to review some of the tactical ideas presented in the book. In short order, I find many examples where I could have played stronger. The text is also ideal right before a tournament or a rated game, as a warm-up. It is much more valuable to me than a five minute speed game before a serious rated game. I fully recommend this book and give it 5 stars. Scott gru-Bell USCF ID#12738508
Rating:
Summary: Bargain price. Descriptive notation only drawback.
Review: Best value for a book of tactical problems. Only drawback is its inreasingly obsolete descriptive notation. Players rated below 2000 should diligently work through this book and the slightly more difficult 1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Puzzle Book
Review: Do not buy this book if you are looking for solutions to problems that include in-depth analysis of the position and then after paragraphs of rambling, the answer. However, if you are looking for a great and proven book for simple puzzles, this book is by far the best choice. Numerous chess tutors have used this book as a learning tool (me being one of them). Reinfeild is one of the greatest chess authors of all time, and after completing each and every puzzle in this book, you will find he has assimilated a great selection of brain teasers. This book will improve your play in situations with mate inevitable. Do not purchase this book and study the examples, just go through them on a board, and eventually (trust me on this), you will find interesting mates all the time!
Rating: 
Summary: On The Other Hand: A Little TOO Brilliant...
Review: Don't misunderstand me - I liked this book when nothing else was available.The basic premise of books like this is that if one becomes familiar (through repeated exposure) to positions like the 1001 presented,one will be far more likely to see the same tactical patterns in one's own games. OK, there's probably a great deal of truth to that. HOWEVER, in twenty years as a near-master player, I've had few serious tournament and non-tournament games where I've sacrificed a queen leading to mate yet Reinfeld has close to 300 queen sacrifices! He has nearly 100 composed problems that are so artificial as to be useless for "pattern" purposes - though admittedly finding the tricky move is fun. There are plenty of more realistic problems (storming the castled position, harrying the king, discovered check, etc.) BUT even here their effectiveness is greatly reduced by the fact that they always lead to forced mates in one or two or (heaven forbid!) three moves. The point is Reinfeld's focus is on forced move sequences leading to mate. Fun to solve, great for beginners up to a point, BUT very misleading! I've won hundreds of speed games, game/30, tournament games, through "boring" knight forks, creating "dull" pins, and looking for undefended pieces for "cheapo" double attacks, where I win a pawn or an exchange. Those are the patterns we need to drill on. Yeah, the book's only a few bucks and it is fun, so you can't go too wrong but would it kill you to win a pawn once in a while?
Rating:
Summary: An Essential Volume for Every Chess Library
Review: Fred Reinfeld probably published more books on chess and wrote more words on chess than any other American author. Lamentably, most of it wasn't all that good. "1001 Checkmates," however, quite deservedly makes John Grefe's list of "The 35 Best Chess Books." "1001 Checkmates" is, quite simply, one of the best books that the student can get for learning and practicing the checkmating patterns. It is somewhat ironic, given the vast volume of verbiage Reinfeld wrote on the royal game, that one of his best books has almost no text at all. It has a brief introduction followed by 1001 problem diagrams and an answer key.
Rating:
Summary: Nice Training Book
Review: I have been using this book for years to constantly go over great checkmates. They are arranged by type of checkmate to allow you to select the type of pattern you want to learn. I hope they do update it and make it algebraic notation.
Rating:
Summary: 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate
Review: I liked this book as I like all of Reinfeld's books on chess.
In fact, I consider him the best chess teacher. However, whenever I buy a paperback of one of Reinfeld's books it begins coming apart at the seems almost immediately. The middle diagram pages get separated from the binding and soon begin falling out. Then the back pages with the answers to the puzzles begin gradually working loose. I still have the book but have lost about 1/4 of the answers and any further interest in reading it. In short, I cannot check 1/4 of the solutions. Unfortunately the solutions that are missing are for the most difficult part of the book which has no stated tactical theme to guide the reader. Why Reinfeld's books are constructed this way is a mystery.
But that has been my experience. In short, be ready with paper clips and glue to keep the pages at least latched securely to the back cover. But its content is OK.
So it gets five stars on content.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific book in its day
Review: I love puzzle books, and have fond memories of this Reinfield tome. However time moves on, and even classics need some correcting. These days there is a wide choice, by a variety of publishers, of quite excellent contemporary puzzle books. The books on the following can all be recommended:
The Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book
Chess Combinations
Chesscafe Puzzle book
365 Ways to Checkmate
Perhaps the closest match to Reinfield is the chunky Ultimate Puzzle book (my favorite), by John Emms, which also contains exactly 1001 puzzles.
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