The Club Player Returns

You used to hold your own at the club. After years away, the moves are still in there somewhere, just slower to surface. These 100 mate-in-two puzzles from real games, rated 1200-1399, are the patterns club players actually meet. Sorted easy to hard, answers on the next screen.

Nobody forgets how the knight moves. What slips is the quick glance that used to find the mate before you had to think about it. This book does not treat you as a beginner. There is no chapter on how the pieces move and no lecture on what checkmate is. Just positions, the way you used to solve them at the club.

Every puzzle is a forced mate in two, taken from a real online game and rated 1200-1399 on the standard online puzzle scale. They run in three parts, from easiest to hardest: Warm-Up, Steady and Challenge, so the first session back feels like stretching before the harder work. The side to move is always at the bottom of the board.

The puzzles are mixed on purpose: two in a row never start with the same kind of piece (rooks and queens count as one), so you solve each one by reading the board, not by repeating the last answer.

A puzzle fills the whole screen, with a clear, easy-to-read diagram and a short hint underneath if you want it. Tap to the very next screen and the answer is waiting, along with a short explanation of why the mate holds. No hunting in the back of the book.

Each solution walks through every defence your opponent can try, not just one tidy line, so you learn to close every door before you commit. Each position has exactly one first move that forces mate.

Use it as a warm-up before you walk back into the club, rejoin a league, or sit down for your first tournament game in years. It reads well on Kindle, phone and tablet, so the puzzles ride along wherever you go. Welcome back.