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

by Peter Giannatos, Daniel Naroditsky (Foreword)

Working on chess tactics and checkmates will help you win more games. It develops your pattern recognition and your ‘board vision' – your ability to capitalize on opportunities. This Workbook features a complete set of fundamental tactics, checkmate patterns, exercises, hints, and solutions. Peter Giannatos selected 738 exercises based on ten years of experience with thousands of pupils at the prize-winning Charlotte Chess Center. All problems are clean, without unnecessary fluff that detracts from their instructive value. The Workbook has ample room for writing down the solutions to the exercises. This is helpful for both students and coaches, who can assign homework from the book without having to worry about being unable to review the solutions. And writing down the correct chess moves will greatly accelerate your learning process. Everyone's First Chess Workbook offers you a treasure trove of chess knowledge and more than enough lessons to keep you busy for a year!

Genres: Chess, Games

344 pages, Paperback

Published September 6, 2021

Reviews

[George Stenger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent chess workbook for beginning and intermediate chess players. I have read several books this summer to prepare for the chess class that I teach at a local grade school. This is one of the top books that I am recommending to the parents. I purchased a few paper copies for the students to use.

I greatly prefer the kindle version of this book and the others that I have reviewed this summer.

[Michelle Curie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most fun and the most frustrating thing about chess is that the more you study, the more aware of your own weaknesses become. There's just so much more to learn all the time! I've started to intensively allocate time to practice chess a couple of years ago now and would consider this book a lovely starter on tactics if you're a complete beginner (to me personally this felt more like a refresher than something I actively gained a lot from).



Everyone's First Chess Workbook is just what it claims to be though: a practical book with over 700 exercises logically structured. Tactics are an element of chess that often decides a game: it's defined as a move or a sequence of moves posing a threat to the opponent. There are essentially three parts in here:

The first helps you with general board visualisation, where you learn to look for hanging / unprotected pieces, see checkmates in one and learn to defend simple threats. This will be easy even for complete beginners, but the important lesson taught is that it's essential to keep an eye on the entire board.



The second part serves as an introduction to tactics. There are little sub-chapters all concentrating on one specific tactical motif like skewers, discovered attacks, forks and pins. An explanatory chapter is followed by some practical exercises in which you get to test if you understood what you just learned. I really enjoyed the structure of this!

The third part deals with intermediate checkmates and combinations. It's the most demanding part and where you get to repeat and put into practice what you just learned. There are hints of what to look for in case you're struggling with one of the exercises, which is also great, because you get this sort of pointer instead of having to look up the answer straight away if you're stuck.

Overall, I would only recommend this to players with a rating of 1000 or less or complete beginners who have never really put thought into tactics, but would like to start somewhere. If you've been playing for a bit like me, you could also see this as a lovely refresher like I did, because I did think the structure of this with explanations followed by practical parts is really helping to memorise all these tactics!

[briz · Rating 4 out of 5]

It works! ELO went up! Yay.

[Hector · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the workbook's 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.

[Joel Rockey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great chess workbook for beginner. Going through it again with my kids.

[Alaharon123 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This really is a great first chess workbook. It has a chapter for each fundamental tactic teaching the tactic and then having a bunch of one move puzzles for the chapters in Part 1, and two move puzzles for the chapters in Part 2 and on. The last two chapters in Part 3 contain some three move puzzles, and in general those two chapters are longer and more difficult than the rest of the book (a little too long in my opinion, would be better if broken up into smaller chapters, but I digress). At 1200 rapid on chess.com, the first half of the book was significantly below my level, but there were definitely some parts later on where the practice was useful, and those last two chapters definitely required some calculation practice.

The book says it's for <1000 otb rating, or <1300 online rating, but I'd say that online number is for lichess. Make that <~1100 for chess.com rapid rating.

A weird thing about this book is that for 2-3 move puzzles, you have to pick a move for your opponent, but often they have multiple equally good/bad options, and the book doesn't tell you what you're expected to do for writing your opponent's move there. My recommendation is to just pick a reasonable one and go with it. Until the last two chapters, where you should calculate all variations.

My only real gripe with this book is that there are no mixed sections, so you always know exactly what tactic to look for until Part 3 when combinations are introduced. Because of this, you don't really have to look at the position and think about what the best thing to do is ever, you just search for the tactic in question. Still good practice, but I think it'd be better if, in addition to the puzzles that are in the book, there were sections throughout with a mix of tactics from previous chapters. This may be better in the chessable version. Perhaps the move trainer may not show the theme of the puzzles it has you review, I do not know.

Because of this gripe, and the fact that this book is only tactics, I would recommend the Chess Steps Method over Everyone's First Chess Workbook. It's not as user-friendly, requiring self-learners to get a manual made for teaching in order to teach themselves and requiring getting a bunch of little workbooks rather than one big one like this one, and it's also more expensive, but I think the pedagogy is better, slowly building up a search strategy for puzzles, which carries over better into your actual games than the more discrete chapters of EFCW. There is a little strategy and slightly more advanced content in the Steps Method as well, making it comprehensive, rather than just a workbook.

That being said, if you can't afford the Steps Method (or the Chess Tutor program alternative it has that's almost as good) or if you have access to EFCW for free through your library, EFCW is a great choice. I would recommend beginners pairing it with a general beginner overview book like Learn to Play Chess Like a Boss by IM Patrick Wolff or Comprehensive Chess Course by FM Roman Pelts and GM Lev Alburt.

[John Osborne · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fine tactics collection, but ...

-3 puzzles per page for a big textbook sized book is too little. Chess steps books manages 12 per page and uses (slightly) smaller pages. I just don't think the value is amazing for $25 considering other options that exist.

-Too easy. Really the first two sections, and even the the first part of the third really are too damn easy. Then the last two chapters seem just a tad too difficult for the general progression of the book. It's not egregious, mind you, but it certainly feels like the difficulty could have built up more gradually. Most of the early sections require almost 0 thought. I know someone will say "but it's meant for beginners", but books like Chess Steps or Soviet Chess Primer show that just because someone is a beginner doesn't mean they can't be pushed without being told exactly what piece for what tactic.

That said. It's definitely not a BAD book. I think for a beginner it's a decent choice. I've certainly gotten some value out of it. It's just not the best beginner tactics book out there . Better choices would be using a series like Chess Steps or Polgar's Learn Chess the Right Way.

[Bobsie67 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good tactics problems for beginner to intermediate players. Some of these puzzles not so easy if you don't already know the pattern. I was able to solve 90% of puzzles fairly quickly (5-10 seconds), but the other 10% were a bit beyond my current skill set. The cover lists 738 exercises, but the answer key and numbered exercises list 692, so not sure where the other 46 exercises are. All tactical exercises are from real grandmaster games, with about 10% from World Champion games. Lots of fun for me. I have the Kindle edition, and the diagrams were clear and checking the answer key was easy to toggle to and from.

[Milford Haven · Rating 5 out of 5]

An easy to follow, systematic chess book.
I believe that this is the first chess book I have ever willingly returned to.
I would go so far as to say that I relish returning to do the exercises in this book.
I love the large diagrams and the font is easy on the eyes.
Plenty of room to write notes on and answers to.
I am working on my exercises slowly and using other books to further deepen my knowledge.
I highly recommend it to those beginners/improvers willing to put in the work.
I believe that this book will deliver the improvement you seek.

[Ijxil · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is difficult to understate how great this book is for chess beginners. Two of my kids, one just starting out virtually, and the other <1000 chess.com but close, have improved significantly because of this book. I love it, and have learned from it as well.

[Haraldohoo · Rating 5 out of 5]

as a 1150 rated chess com player, i think chapter three was excellent for me. the earlier chapters also excellent but for lower rated players.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the better tactical books useful at the lowest levels

sometimes the books with very careful selection of tactical themes are the ones to find, where you get quality over quantity.

[José Alejandro Vázquez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muy buen libro de táctica para principiantes, bastantes ejemplos y una buena progresión de dificultad.

[Josh Tondreau · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic resource that will enable your budding interest in Chess to flourish and become a long-lasting passion. When I began this book I had no clue what a tactic was, and the only pattern I had stored in my mind was the one where a knight comes to c2/c7 and forks my king and rook. After finishing it I can tell you I've learned a lot - and have WAY more to learn, more than I would have ever imagined. This book will blast your gameplay past the initial stages to the next level, while also demonstrating that there is an enormous wealth of knowledge still waiting to be explored and conquered.