It's Your Move Improvers

by Chris Ward

In this highly original and instructive test yourself book Chris Ward invites readers to solve a selection of carefully chosen puzzles. In this, the second book in the ¿It¿s Your Move¿ series, the positions are aimed at improving players, specifically the low level club players who are looking to hone their skills in order to climb further up the chess ladder. The reader is given a choice of five plausible plans for each position and has to decide which is the most likely to succeed. The answers then identify the most promising plan and explain why the other choices are less attractive.

Genres: Chess

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Andreas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is for players in the ELO range of 1300-1700. The author has come up with an interesting concept: 5 different characters will provide an answer and the reader can pick what he thinks is the right one. As a training it's best to first try to find the answer without any help and only then to look at the suggestions.

The 50 puzzles cover everything from opening to endgame and one can solve them within a few days. As much as I liked the puzzles, I am not sure about the training effect. It felt too much like a feel-good book and is more suitable for younger players.

Igor Khmelnitsky does something similar with his Chess Exam books (without the funny characters though) but his puzzles are much tougher and more demanding. Serious players should therefore prefer the Chess Exam and Training Guide: Rate Yourself and Learn How to Improve! with the additional side effect that they will identify the areas they need to train most.