Test Your Chess IQ: First Challenge

Rating:
Summary: Excellent training for improving chess players
Review: Since this book is in the form of 56 tests, to be taken seriously, as if one were playing a tournament game, I have one obvious complaint. Namely, why tell the reader what the theme is?

Why say it is "double attack," or "discovered attack," or "discovered check," or "pin," or "diversion," or "decoy," or "interference," or "defence-elimination," or "square vacation," or "line-opening," or "utilization of open files," or "diagonal-opening," or "utilization of open diagonals," or "smothered mate," or "blocking," or "x-ray" or "overloading," or "back rank weakness," or "weakness of the second rank," or "zwischenzug," or "passed pawns," or "simplifying combinations," or "stalemating combinations," or "geometrical motifs," or "attack on the king side castled position," or "attack on the king caught in the center," or "destructive combinations?"

These are great themes to test us on, but in a real game, we don't know that there is a theme, let alone which theme!

How good should one be at chess to profit from this book? I think you need to be at least a C-player (1400 USCF) to get the full benefit. And I've seen Masters go through it too! It's good practice for a big range of chess players. It definitely helped me.

Rating:
Summary: Important tactics book!
Review: This book is a must for those who wish to improve their ability to calculate. These are just a collection of tests and will only help you if you follow the instructions carefully! Do not casually read through the examples like you would with "1001 Brilliant Chess Sac..." by Reinfeld, but do the tests as if you are playing a tournament. Here are some helpful hints from the book.

1. Set up the pieces on a board, this simulates actual play. 2. Do the tests regularly, but not too often. 3. Be honest in grading yourself. 4. Follow the directions on timing yourself.

In summary, a great book if used properly! You should be at least 1400 rated for this to help.

Rating:
Summary: Great Content, Poor Printing
Review: This book is a series of tactics exercises by a famous teacher in the former Soviet Union. It is part of a three-book series that comprises a course that was used to test many future Soviet GMs when they were just promising young masters. Kasparov and Karpov were included in this group. The course was refined and improved over several decades of testing and practice. One would expect, then, an excellent set of instructive and testing exercises, and indeed that expectation is fully met. These are high-quality examples.

The book is divided into tests, each taking about 40 minutes, with eight positions to solve. The tests are divided by themes such as "Decoy" or "Double Attack" or "Destructive Sacrifices." I found this format to be helpful, pleasant and instructive.

This first book in the series has the easiest problems of the three, yet it seems safe to say that United States chessplayers rated under 2200 will have their hands full with these exercises and will learn plenty from doing them. I found the exercises more difficult than advertised. The last book (GRANDMASTER CHALLENGE) is supposedly suitable for players rated 2000-2200 but let me tell you, as a player rated 2136 USCF, many of those problems were beyond my abilities the first time through.

Still, I learned a great deal about tactics by taking the tests in this series, and I intend to go back to it periodically. I recommend it highly for its content.

The one problem with this book is that the printing is of poor quality. In some places the diagrams are so smeared or dark that you can barely make out which pieces are on which squares. This is regrettable. A Russian man has several decades to work on refining and perfecting a serious course of instruction, offers it to the Western public at a reasonable price, and the careless publisher cannot deign to give it a decent printing. The author should be proud and the publisher should be ashamed.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent tactics workbook for intermediate players
Review: This is an excellent book to test and refine your tactical ability. It is probably best suited to players rated between 1500 - 1900 USCF who have already studied a beginning primer on the subject.

Basically the book consists of 56 tests, each containing 8 practice problems. Each section focuses on a particular tactical theme and is timed. You are given a score based upon the total time used and the number of problems correctly solved.

The author recommends tackling one or two tests per week. (An average test of 8 problems requires approximately 35 - 55 minutes to complete).

After a large number of tests have been taken you can estimate your chess rating based upon your test scores. The author provides a reference table to equate scores to aproximate ratings. (I found the model fairly accurately reflects my current rating as oppossed to some other books I have tried).

I have been pleased to see my average score slowly, but steadily improve over the last few months of working on these tests.

Bottom line is this - for most chess players tactics are the most important element of the game to focus on. You would be hard pressed to find a book that is better organized than this!

I am looking forward to completing this book very soon so I can go on and tackle the next volume in the series - "Test your Chess IQ - Master Challenge".

Rating:
Summary: Great book on tactics, with accurate ratings predictions
Review: Wow. I'm impressed. You can learn a lot of chess with this book, and if you honestly grade and time yourself, you'll get a realistic picture of where you stand.

These puzzles are not easy. They take about 5 minutes each, and you'll have to put in that much time if you want your rating to be indicated accurately. This is NOT for tactics training, even though you will learn from it. You need to be VERY GOOD at tactics before you attempt these; otherwise, you'll get NOTHING correct. You'd be wise to go through Lev Alburt's Chess Training Pocket Book at least once before tackling these.

If you're 1500, you could start this book, but don't rush through it. Do one 8-problem test per week and monitor your progress through the year. (There are 56 tests.)

Each test is prefaced with the sort of tactics you will be looking for, and some of the puzzles are very similar within a test. This is intentional. The authors want you to LEARN, but without making things too obvious.

I have noticed minor typos in the answers, but no actual errors, which is quite rare for a puzzle book. The font, diagram size, printing, and layout are all excellent. The original games are named in the answers, rather than in the problems, to avoid distraction. Remember: These tests are timed!

Highly recommended. But if you're below 1500 USCF, caveat emptor! You don't want to ruin the future value of this book by cheating and looking at all the answers now!