Torsten Mattsson - Basic Checkmate Patterns Revision 1 Complete

I blogged about this book about 5 weeks ago. I was looking for a pattern based book of basic checkmates and this appeared to be exactly what I was looking for. 204 problems for $2.99 is a pretty good deal. There are 64 different "patterns" broken down by combination of pieces, followed by a series of mate in N, N+1, N+2 checkmates from a game so the student gradually builds up to a mate that could be 4-5 moves in length. Most of the problems are white to move, but there are a few black to move as well.  Here's an example from the Queen and Pawn pattern:

What I also like about this book is that he provides the entire pgn of the game as the solution.  I found some of the mates interesting enough that I wanted to play over the entire game to see how it got to the finish.

I only found 2 errors out of all the games provided.

Now for the statistics, in Bright Knight style.  There are 204 unique problems of various difficulty.  I divided the problems into two sets.  Any problems that only went up to mate in 2, I placed the mate in 1 in set A and the mate in 2 in set B.  For anything 3 or higher, I placed the first 2 in set A and the remaining in set B.  This means that set A should be significantly easier than set B, although it should aid in solving problems in set B.

Unsurprisingly, the set A problems are pretty easy.

The set B problems were much harder for me.  They are around Bain in terms of difficulty.  There were 19 problems that I was unable to complete in under 15 seconds 2 of the last 3 repetitions, so I will do a supplementary revision with them.

Anyone looking for a first checkmate problems book should definitely consider this one.