Is Your Move Safe?: Initial and Final Candidate Moves

This Is Your Move Safe?: Initial and Final Candidate Moves is a chess training book by Dan Heisman that focuses on one of the most practical skills at the board: checking whether a candidate move is actually safe before you play it.

What the book covers

Heisman uses more than 150 theoretical and tournament positions to show that a move can look calm and sensible while still hiding a tactical flaw. He also shows the opposite case: moves that seem risky at first glance may in fact be the safest choice on the board.

That makes this book different from a standard tactics collection. Instead of asking how to exploit an opponent's weakness, Is Your Move Safe? trains you to test your own candidate moves and cut down on tactical oversights.

How the training works

The book presents multiple-choice training positions at a range of difficulty levels, from relatively easy to very demanding. Many of the answers are not obvious and are discussed in detail, so you do more than simply check the solution — you also learn how to analyse the position more deeply.

It is a practical choice for players who want to improve move selection, reduce tactical mistakes and judge positional safety more accurately. The material is suitable for players from lower intermediate level up to strong masters.

About the author

Dan Heisman is a chess trainer and the author of Is Your Move Safe?: Initial and Final Candidate Moves. His work includes Novice Nook in Chess Café, as well as the video series Improve Your Chess on the Internet Chess Club and the earlier programme Ask the Renaissance Man.

Key details

• Product type: chess book
• Author: Dan Heisman
• Subject: evaluating whether a chosen move is safe
• Format: multiple-choice training positions
• Content: more than 150 theoretical and tournament positions
• Difficulty: from relatively easy to very demanding
• Audience: players from lower intermediate level up to strong masters