1001 Checkmates

Modern Chess is too much concerned with things like Pawn structure. Forget it, Checkmate ends the game. This statement by Nigel Short may trigger different reactions in the chess experts of the world. Some may argue that it oversimplifies the game, since it is not possible to play for checkmate in all positions. On the other hand, it quite correctly pinpoints a major problem for beginning players in that they simply don't know how to end the game. I've seen this in our kids classes at my local club. The kids can be up a ton of material, but they don't know how to checkmate their opponent. A common piece of advice served to beginners is "do a lot of tactics". And I agree that this is a good idea. But I think we should expand on that advice and suggest that beginners (and stronger players) "do a lot of checkmates". And what better way to do this than go through a checkmate puzzle book?

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What can you expect from this book?

I don't remember where or when I first heard about this book, but it was probably highly recommended. So I bought it and put it in my bookshelf together with dozens of other books that I am planning to read. And it has probably been sitting there for several years. When planning a family trip over the holidays, I wanted to bring a book that I could probably finish over the two weeks we were going away. And the choice fell on John Nunn's 1001 Deadly Checkmates. So after all this time, sitting unread in my bookshelf, the book finally got to become a part of my chess training. 

1001 Deadly Checkmates is exactly what you'd expect from a puzzle book. As the title suggests, the book contains 1001 puzzles for you to solve. And the solution is always checkmate. If you simply find a way to win material, that is not the solution you should be looking for.

Each puzzle is assigned a certain amount of points, ranging from 1 to 5. The number of points reflects the difficulty of the puzzle, and you can note your score at the end of each chapter. 

When preparing this post, I found another review on a lichess blog. The lichess user Numerot has written a review in which he gives his opinion on this book. He summarizes the difficulty levels as follows:

1 — Entirely trivial, solved-at-a-glance puzzles.

2 — Fine pattern recognition building fodder.

3 — Just right: some difficulty solving, but usually fairly brisk solves.

4 — Very difficult; some I couldn't solve.

5 — Just barely solvable, many I couldn't solve.   

This rating will of course differ depending on your strength and tactical skills. Numerot seems to be a quite strong player, with ratings over 2000 in most time controls. His tactics rating is also quite high, just shy of 2300. If you are a beginner, you will probably not agree with his assessment of the difficulty.

My tactics rating is around the same level as his, and I agree with his assessment of the 1-point puzzles. But for me personally, I would categorize the rest as "pattern recognition building fodder" or "just right". When working through the book, I solved about 95 % of the puzzles correctly. 

I have used puzzles from this book when teaching kids at my club. I think their strenght corresponds to ratings around 800–1000, and the level seems just right for them. The one-pointers take them about 3 minutes to solve. They usually manage to solve the five-pointers if they work together; sometimes I need to give them a little hint.

The book has 17 chapters, of which the first 14 cover various themes, such as back-rank mates, queen sacrifices, pawn-promotion mates and so on. The remaining three chapters present mixed puzzles without a particular theme. Chapter 16 is called "Mate revision test" and gives you 60 puzzles you can use to test your skills. The final chapter ("Extreme mate challenge") has about 50 difficult puzzles, all of which are worth five points.

Although I had read recommendations of this book before picking it up, I hadn't looked into the target audience or level of difficulty. If I had done that, I would have found descriptions such as the following from the leading Swedish chess reseller Schackbutiken: 

When you have read your first beginners book on combination and want to move on, Nunn's 1001 Deadly Checkmates is a good choice.

If I had read this description, I would probably not have bought the book; simply because it is too easy for players at my level. But I am still glad I have read it, because it's a very good book, and drilling checkmate patterns – even if some are fairly simple – is a good way to strenghten your tactical vision. And I found a lot of good training material for my chess classes at the club.

My only quibble with this book is that I don't really see the point (pun intended) of the scoring system. Some books have a table that allows you to "translate" your scores to an approximate rating level. I haven't found anything like this in Nunn's book. But it doesn't really matter anyway. If you want to, I guess you could use the book to compete against your friends to see who can score the most points. But the points are probably most useful for indicating the level of difficulty of the puzzles.

Who should read this book?

This is an excellent book for beginners and post beginners who need to train their familiarity with tactics patterns. In terms of rating, I think it is best for players up to 1400. It can also be used by intermediate players who want to brush up on these skills, or strengthen their pattern recognition. But if you are stronger than 1700, this is probably not the best book for you.

About this book

Author:	John Nunn
Title:	1001 Deadly Checkmates
Type of book:	Tactics
Level:	Beginner