Mate-in-2 problem set is fun and useful

[drahacikfm]

If you haven't signed up for the silver or gold membership, you should!  Just one example of what you get is the unrated special problem sets.  The mate-in-2 set is very fun.  You can do a couple hundred problems in one hour, so you get to see a lot of typical mating patterns and store them in your brain.  You might think that it's not going to help to do lots of these easy problems.  But the point is not whether you can solve them or not.  The point is to be able to see these mating possibilities in your games, 4 or 5 moves before they happen!

I did more than two thousand of the mate-in-2 problems before the tournament I played last week, and I was much more aware during the games of possible mates for me and for my opponent that might occur some moves in the future.  The mates didn't actually happen, but it certainly helped in choosing which moves to play.

My 9-year-old son, who has a national rating over 1800, is doing 100 of these each day.  Too bad he will run out of mate-in-2's in about a month.  But then there is the mate-in-3 set!  I think it's very good training.  Maybe even better than beating your brains out for several minutes on each standard-rated problem, and getting 50% wrong.  And surely more fun.

[tmr]

If you run out of more simple problems here on Chess Tempo or just want to take problems with you, say on a handheld as I do, you can without much effort (googe search on polgar 5334 pgn) find polgar's 5334 chess problems in pgn format.  Also available in pgn are Reinfeld's 1001 brilliant ways to checkmate and 1001 winning chess sacrifices and combinations.  One of these (can't remember which) is easy to find, the other much harder.  Find them all and you have over 7300 problems to solve.

I find the 1001 WCSC problems to be a bit frustrating though as many have refutations that apparently Reinfeld never considered.  That is what a computer does for you!

[newlook]

I created a set of low-rated mates (below 1200 Standard, relative to my mid-1600s Standard rating) and worked on those for a while. I decided that I like having a mix of mates and non-mates. I made a new set of all Below-1200 problems. I'm really enjoying this custom set. I do 20 or more of these easy problems first and then switch to Standard Rated mode for 5 problems.

It's too early to tell, but the problems at my own level feel easier after the easy warm-up set than when I am doing only problems at my own level. I get quantity with the easy set and quality with CT's rated selection process.

[drahacikfm]

Yes, that's a good plan, warming up first before doing standard-rated.  I often do 10 or 20 mate-in-2's before starting the rated problems.  Kind of like warming up before a tennis match.