Mating patterns from
800 games in the
The Reversing Mate course offers an understandable and an extremely helpful method to help plan for game winning checkmates.
When neither party can give checkmate, the game is drawn.
- Howard Staunton
Every chess player has been in that situation in which after a move, we say, "I should have seen that". An opponent's blunder that we missed, a winning tactic that we missed. Sometimes we may know that there is forced mate or tactic in a situation, but we're just not sure how to make the correct moves. I can't count the number of times I've gone for that winning sacrifice, only to lose the game! Only if there were some way to see that final move and position, and then to work backwards from there. Well, that's exactly what the Reversing Method does. In some ways it is similar to the approach of modern chess engines and software. In doing deep analysis the software will often work from the last position backwards. And that is what we're doing. Looking at the position we want to solve in reverse. In this first course of the series we will explore forced mates.
The Method
The Reversing Method first shows you the final move position, a mate-in-1. Once solved, you immediately need to solve the position again, but from a few moves back, The mate-in-1 positions can themselves be quite tricky, but once solved will help you find that same position from a few moves back. In the
Reversing Mate chapters, the first variation is always the mating move, a mate-in-1. The second variation repeats the same line, but takes you back one or more moves before the final mating move. The concept is that once you identify the final mating pattern you can work towards setting it up in the preceding moves The
Test Positions chapters repeats all the positions, but without the preceding mate-in-1 variation.
The Trainable Variations
The 3,200 trainable variations of this course are based on
800 mating patterns.
These 800 patterns are presented as
800 mate in 1 variations, and then again as
800 mate in 2 or more variations, for a total of 1,600 trainable variations in the
Reversing Mate chapters.
As the Reversing Mate chapters are for once off, or occasional, training, the same 1,600 patterns are repeated in the
Test Chapters. 800 mate in 1 tests and 800 mate in 2 or more tests. These are the variations to drill again and again using the MoveTrainer technology on Chessable.
In this
World Champions Edition the extra novelty is that the positions are all inspired from 800 games of World Champions (before, during and after their World Championship title). In some of the games it is the champion who is mated! In this first volume, variations are compiled from the games of the classical period of chess from Greco right up to the early years of Viswanathan Anand (and 23 additional chess champions between them!). A
full database of games is included. Because so many of the GM games end with a resignation the variations in this course, which all arise from the positions within these games, continue to play the moves after the resignation to show the forced mate.
About the Author
Dr Alan Bester (PhD) resides on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast of South Africa. Alan is passionate about chess and while playing league chess in the mid-1990s was invited to give chess lessons to a group of scholars in the local school. The Chessable platform has enabled him to now share his chess learning experiences with a wider and an international community.
Alan is the author of the highly rated The Unexpected Mate, The Reversing Mate Series, The Forwarding and Reversing series, the Moves Ahead series, and the free On the Attack series which have together attracted thousands of students.
As Chessable staff, we'd also like to remind you that the high quality of Dr Bester's chess work has led to endorsements from leading coaches and players such as GM Alex Colovic.
