Quick Book Review: Yusupov's Build Up Your Chess 1 - The Fundamentals
Artur Yusupov, Build Up Your Chess 1: The Fundamentals (Quality Chess 2008). 261 pp. €23.99/£15.99/$29.95. Reviewed by Dennis Monokroussos.
Artur Yusupov should be well-known to chess fans. Three times in the 1980s and '90s he made it to the semi-finals of the Candidates, and in addition to his many successes on the chessboard, he has enjoyed a very successful literary collaboration with über-trainer Mark Dvoretsky. Based on their works, you might expect this book to be another mind-buster like Dvoretsky's Analytical Manual. That was my assumption, at any rate, but it was a mistaken one.
What then can we expect from this work? It's the first in what should be a series of three books, which are together drawn from a three-year training program he used in his chess academy. The most elementary year's program was for players under 1500, the second year for those under 1800, and the last for those under 2100. Each year's curriculum featured 24 modules with a test after each and an overall exam at the very end, and the book under review presents the first year's curriculum.
The material is uneven in difficulty, and at first I found this confusing. Some units covered really elementary material, while some positions in other units were considerably more sophisticated. (Not master-level sophistication, but a jump up from other material in adjacent units.) The way I understand it at this point makes sense of this disparity, however. First, the book, like the training program it came from, is in some ways ideally suited for teachers/trainers, though Yusupov has done a nice job of organizing the material for self-use. Second, it's better to think of the material as giving the budding player everything needed to reach 1500. That includes quite a lot, so it's understandable that not all the material will be equally challenging.
Verdict: Worth considering for teachers and those under 1500, though it shouldn't be thought of us as the only book such a player will or should ever use prior to attaining that rating.
The book is available here and here, among other places.
Artur Yusupov should be well-known to chess fans. Three times in the 1980s and '90s he made it to the semi-finals of the Candidates, and in addition to his many successes on the chessboard, he has enjoyed a very successful literary collaboration with über-trainer Mark Dvoretsky. Based on their works, you might expect this book to be another mind-buster like Dvoretsky's Analytical Manual. That was my assumption, at any rate, but it was a mistaken one.
What then can we expect from this work? It's the first in what should be a series of three books, which are together drawn from a three-year training program he used in his chess academy. The most elementary year's program was for players under 1500, the second year for those under 1800, and the last for those under 2100. Each year's curriculum featured 24 modules with a test after each and an overall exam at the very end, and the book under review presents the first year's curriculum.
The material is uneven in difficulty, and at first I found this confusing. Some units covered really elementary material, while some positions in other units were considerably more sophisticated. (Not master-level sophistication, but a jump up from other material in adjacent units.) The way I understand it at this point makes sense of this disparity, however. First, the book, like the training program it came from, is in some ways ideally suited for teachers/trainers, though Yusupov has done a nice job of organizing the material for self-use. Second, it's better to think of the material as giving the budding player everything needed to reach 1500. That includes quite a lot, so it's understandable that not all the material will be equally challenging.
Verdict: Worth considering for teachers and those under 1500, though it shouldn't be thought of us as the only book such a player will or should ever use prior to attaining that rating.
The book is available here and here, among other places.
Posted by Dennis Monokroussos on
Tuesday November 11, 2008 at 2:40am