Looking for Trouble: Recognizing and Meeting Threats in Chess Paperback – March 17, 2014

I'm an unrated player estimated to be in the 1300-1400 range by folks at the club. I also help coach complete beginners at the middle school my daughter goes to. Now you know the relevant facts about the reviewer: here goes.The book has over 200 puzzles (in the form of "White to move after someBlackMove) with two-part answers; threat and prevention. Sometimes finding the threat is the hard part and sometimes the prevention is the head-scratcher. The answers don't just have variations, but also explanation of how to handle the position.Heisman's advice is wonderfully pragmatic. I'll quote an interesting sample; a 1-star problem where the puzzle is common sense, not tactical.(The board has K+R+7 pawns against the same, with the b-file open.)The answer is:Threat: 2. Rb1, getting the only open file for his rook, which White can use to penetrate Black's position.Prevention: 1...Rb8. Tit for tat. The first one to control the file has an advantage. This is a good example of a position where one does not have to look ahead in order to find the best move; general principles and a little experience will tell you that grabbing the open file first must be better than the alternatives. Therefore, it is just a waste of time in this position to see what will happen next. Just make sure the move is really safe and play it, and figure out later if you are winning or just on the better side of a draw.What else?The one to five stars rating of problem difficulty seems about right to me.The puzzles are reasonably divided between opening, middle game, and endgame.The only errors I've found seem to be the same one recurring because the proofreader is unfamiliar with the new concept. ;-) In several places, the player to move is stated wrongly, even though the move given always makes it clear who moves next.I like this book so much I immediately started stealing explanations from it to coach the beginners.

I have only had a limited amount of time to review this book and study its teachings. I found an error in the diagram of the opening section of the book which bothered me. Chess is already a difficult game without having to sort out mistakes in the book itself. Let me also add that I recently contacted the author (Dan Heisman) about this, and not only did he respond almost immediately with the correction, he included all the errors and corrections for this book. He pointed out that most books have errors on the first printing and responsible authors will take the time to look for them and correct them.Having said all of this, I must also state that it is a very well organized book. It is broken out into opening, middle and endgame threats and very easy to read in its format. I mention the format because while many chess books probably have useful information in them, when they are cluttered or present very few diagrams, they are not especially helpful to me. Mr. Heisman has taken the time to present the information in a way that the book can be taken on a trip or just read without a chess board and still learn a great deal. A chess board is always better when the problems are played out, but not always practical. As a struggling chess player I would highly recommend this book.

I'll start off by stating that I am a novice-intermediate level player who has several chess books and a training CD to boot!. (Fred Reinfeld, Complete Chess player, Chess for Dummies, Burgess Mammoth book of chess). With the exception of Chess for Dummies, they all look nice on my shelf. Everytime I pick up Burgess or Reinfeld I lose interest quickly. This book by Heisman has me hooked ! To me, it's much more useful than "Find mate in 2 " problems. It teaches you to think about what your oppenent is up to (threat) and how to (and not to ) respond. In essence, play CHESS. My copy is already worn and battered up a bit..like all my other favorite paperbacks.

I had high hopes for this book after reading Dan Heisman's columns. I expected it to help me lower my my rate of obvious blunders and my tendency to overlook potential combinations for my opponent that I need to address.However, the problems in this book were far too difficult for this purpose (in contrast to those I've seen in Heisman's columns), and aside from the simple role reversal, this book is really no different from an ordinary problem book with problems for advanced or strong intermediate players.

It is one thing to make a book by slapping together a bunch of "mate in 2" or "white to move and win" problems. That is a great way to improve one's offensive ability. How about defense? This book helps to look for defensive motifs as well. This changes the paradigm in tactics books and I am very glad that I bought this book.

Good concept but terrible editing. Numerous problems where it says white to move when it is blacks. Several problems where answer is illegal move.

This is so much different than all of the other tactics books that have you looking to "win in two". I'm only at the beginning of this book, but I'm so glad I bought it.

A well laid out book for teaching how to recognize chess threats.The chess problems would be too difficult for the beginner and most intermediatechess players.

Trouble: Book title sets wrong expectation. I was expecting it to be a collection of defensive tactical puzzles. Lots of puzzles in this book are positional though. For example, O36 "easy" threat is "driving the knight out of the center". I would not call it a "threat" or "trouble" - maybe an "inconvenience". Another example is O35, where bishop can be attacked by pawn, and there are 4 correct answers - with so many ways out of this "trouble" - I would not call this a trouble either. In the introduction Heisman warns that some of the "threats" in the book are ignorable, some unstoppable. Add to this big variance in puzzles difficulty and you end up with too much variance and vagueness.Prevention: If you think of this book more like "Looking for best candidate moves in various positions" instead of "Finding the way out trouble", then you'll have better relationship with the book. Set the same expectation as from the Ray Cheng book.

Um livro diferente! Traz as posições e os lances que levaram até elas e daí faz o questionamento sobre o que fazer, qual o risco, qual a melhor jogada! Gostei ! Livro muito bem impresso e com bom acabamento! Acredito que dê para evoluir , desde que use tabuleiro e peças para estudar, simulando uma situação real de jogo!

An excellent training chess book, easily explained and should improveyour rating. Prompt delivery.

Nice book