Learn Chess the Right Way! Book 5: Finding Winning Moves
The Learn Chess the Right Way series is Susan Polgar’s five-volume course for novice, beginner and intermediate players. Drawing on her experience as a former world champion and award-winning coach, it covers the essential tactics for mating and winning material along with sound defensive technique, and each volume includes over 500 puzzles.Book 5, the last in the series, is about finding the best continuation at the critical moments of a game. The first four volumes introduced all the basic tactical elements for winning material and delivering mate; this one asks you to put them to work.It opens with more advanced themes, including quiet moves that lead to mate or win material, and zugzwang. The second part is a broad test built on everything learned in the series: the patterns are familiar, but, as in a real game, there is no hint about which one to look for.The task in each puzzle is straightforward — checkmate the opponent or win material — but most positions require you to calculate two to four moves for each side to find the solution.Polgar has distilled more than forty years of playing and coaching at the highest level into this method, and this volume closes the course by training you to recognise the patterns without being told where to look.About the AuthorSusan Polgar, a four-time winner of Women’s World Championships, is the top-ranked woman player in the United States. She took the women’s world number-one spot as a 15-year-old and stayed among the top three for more than two decades. She was honoured as U.S. Coach of the Year in 2013 and as FIDE Trainer of the Year in 2014, the first person to earn both. Guided by her, the SPICE teams of Texas Tech and then Webster University won seven national Division I collegiate titles in a row.