Everyone's First Chess Workbook: Fundamental Tactics and Checkmates for Improvers – 738 Practical Exercises

I have been learning how to play chess after only ever really knowing how the pieces move I’ve gotten a lot better recently but learning some opening principles, playing frequently and studying tactic puzzles. This book is very helpful and is user friendly and good for beginners/ adult improvers. Me and my 8 year old often do the puzzles together. He’s better at them than I am!

What Giannatos' has done here is amazing. I have many books that teach tactical and checkmate theory as well as tactics puzzle collections which are arranged by theme that operate under the guise of "teaching"The problem is these books just give problems. The solver might delude themselves that they are learning because they find the solution.... Ten minutes later. This does not translate to practical play. If your opponent has a threat that took you 10 minutes to find then likely you won't see it and lose to it.2nd, people solve puzzles without an aim. They just approach it the same way they approach question sets for exams. If they solve it, they consider it done. They don't examine how they solved it and why they solved it and how it can translate to their game.As a professional in my field, I often here some colleagues say they "finished all the past year papers" and they still did poorly for the exam.This is because their approach is wrong. Chess has more positions than one can imagine. Just like how good students solve questions to spark themselves to ask more questions about what they know and what should they do about it, a good chess solver would draw many conclusions from one puzzle and imagine other positions that can be possible with the same theme. They play around with the single idea until they are done; Back to the example of a person solving exam questions, they find the topics and sub topics that are involved in the question and then go research it and decide what to memorize, what to understand, and what to recognize (pattern recognition). They then decide how often to review it. They then imagine questions an examiner might ask with the facts and concepts they uncovered.Unfortunately many solvers, don't bother with this. For them if they got it right, they've done their work, worse is they get it wrong and rather than edify the problem for a few hours just decide something like (e.g. bishop moves here and it's winning when the pawn is there and the king is there). Well, what are the exact chances that the exact position will appear in your game? What are the chances that there is a minor difference in the position which allows new defences and replies?Now to get to the point, Peter Giannatos' carefully guides the reader by providing the theme, the categorization, the order and the recurring patterns. He also tells the reader what to look for in all the positions. He provides examples that gradually get harder ( by the end of the book, most answers are 4 ply). With such organization of material, the reader has less chance to mess up his or her study approach and actually learn what he/ she is supposed to.Landmark accomplishment. This book allows the blurriest "i don't understand what I'm doing" student to learn what needs to be learnt. Common sense not required to improve with this book.

I originally bought this as part of the Chess Dojo, where I was learning to play chess. However, my five year old became super interested in chess and in puzzles, and this became hers!You’d think a five year old can’t learn chess tactics, but that’s where you’re wrong! After she learned the basics, she absolutely loved this book for the challenge of solving a puzzle. She is way more into this than actually playing a full game right now, which challenges her attention span.At first, we used the book to set up the board and show her a puzzle to solve. But she realized it was written up in the book itself, so she clamored for the chance to learn to read the diagrams themselves and solve them! She actually learned chess notation to write in the answers too!I was blown away by how many hours of fun she has had with this. When other kids show interest in chess, we now always buy their parents a copy to enjoy together just like us!

The book overall was what I was looking for, however I knocked one star off because the number of exercises is very misleading. The front cover says 759 exercises, the inside title page says 738, but there are actually only 713. Kind of a bummer that there are 46 exercises missing (6% of the advertised number on the cover). But again, the content is what I was looking for. If it was not for the above, I would have rated it 5 stars.

Perfect Chess book for my students!

I love the workbooks format. Puzzles are great and neatly organized base on ideas it’s trying to teach you.My one complaint is that it’s too short! Some chapters only have like 20 puzzles and you can fly through them in. 20 minutes or less. It’s a good primer, but i already know after i finish it I’m going to have to jump straight into something like the “learn chess the right way” five book series.

I bought this workbook for my 8 year old who has been playing chess recreationally for a few years (knows the rules of chess and plays casually at least once a week) and recently participated in his first scholastic chess tournament. The book is well organized (three sections - Part 1: General Board Visualization, Part 2: Introduction to Tactical Vision, Part 3: Intermediate Checkmates and Combinations) and the concepts are ordered in a progressive way that builds upon previous material in a thoughtful way. My son has enjoyed working through the puzzles. It took him just a couple days to complete Part 1. He is eager to get started on Part 2!

It's good