1000 Checkmate Combinations - Victor Khenkin

Hello.  This book by V. Khenkin has not been discussed in this forum and with very few amazon reviews from users I am reaching out to people that have work with it to ask their opinion.  Books that are alternative to the one I am refering to have been commented consistently in this forum so we can keep our attention on Khenkin's to have a sharp thread.  I would appreciate your comments on any aspect such as content, quality, usefulness, etc that you would like to write about.  Thanks.

I have the book but haven't started in on it yet, as I'm working on another book right now (Forcing Chess Moves).

I grabbed this book as I'm going through a heavy tactics training regimen and liked what I had seen of it. I pulled it down off my shelf and here are my basic impressions.

Each chapter is broken down into the key piece(s) involved in the combinations. The first part of the chapter goes over some basic mating positions, followed by some game segments, with discussions, on the particular mating patterns/combinations.

At the end of the chapter are the exercises, 6 to a page layout, front and back with the solutions at the very end of the book. I actually prefer the layout in FCM where the exercises are on the front of the page and the solutions on the back but this layout is fine.

I don't know for sure when I'm going to start with the book, though I still think it will be a very useful one. I'm going to go through FCM a second time, for a more thorough study, and may put this one as my next one to go through.

I'm using this book to dip into every day at the moment. One reviewer on Amazon thought it was just an algebraic version of Tal's winning combinations, which Khenkin co-authored, and the books are similar in concept while far from identical in content.

I love it, the examples are far from obvious and the prose is witty and intelligent.

If my house burned down and I had one minute to grab a chess book on tactics, I would take Sukhin's Chess Gems over this one, with its many forgotten combinations from the past. 

I absolutely love this book.  One of the nice things is that instead of the way that a lot of checkmate tactics books are broken down (i.e. back rank mate, long diagonal mates, queen sacrifice mates, etc) this book is broken down by piece combinations.  i.e. two rooks, or queen and knight.

The idea is to show how certain pieces work in coordination, which I think works extremely well.

It is a very good book.

Thank you guys for you comments.  Would you mind saying something about what class player the book targets? Cheers.

I'd say everyone from 1000 on up to 2200 or so.

One of the motifs covered is mates by three pieces.  So there is some really advanced stuff in there along with your basic queen, queen + rook, etc. stuff.

Very useful book. It's targeted for wide range of chess audience. There are some basic examples, some intermediate ones and some are very advanced. You can go through most of the problems by just reading diagrams but every now and then you must set the position on the real board, because sometimes combination goes for over eight moves and more. The author recommends solving just a couple of problems every day but to repeat them over and over again to imprint the patterns in your brain. I like Tal's preview of the book, saying that checkmate patterns are always present on the board even if not clearly executable. It's just like when you needed to memorize division and multiplication table that always stand invisibly behind even the most complex mathematical formulae. Sometime ago, I read (I think it was on this site) that some master (I can't remember which one) had used that book on a daily basis to keep him sharp between the tournaments. I've read little over hundred pages for now and I must say some of the checkmate patterns were completely new to me. It's a great book to use while taking a crap (not to wipe your azzz but to read it of course). There, hope it helped.

Thanks for your thorough comments.  Cheers.

I think the ChessOK training software CT-Art Basic Mating Combinations is based on this book. Looking at the text in the opening section on Rooks, it's the same as that in the software.