by Artur Yusupov, 264pp. (Quality Chess, 2008)

 

Build up your Chess with Artur Yusupov is for chess players who want to build their skills on solid foundations. Yusupov guides the reader towards a higher level of chess understanding using carefully selected positions and advice. This new understanding is then tested by a series of puzzles.

In 2003 Yusupov began a 3-year training programme in his chess academy. This programme was later taken over, in a different form, by the Chess Tigers University. As Yusupov himself writes in the introduction, "...the overwhelmingly positive comments of my students encouraged me to rework this programme in the form of a series of books".

The reader will receive the necessary basic knowledge in six areas of the game - tactics, positional play, strategy, the calculation of variations, the opening and the endgame.

The book consists of 24 lessons with a certain theme. Each lesson has a general explanation of the theme (for example 'the pin' or 'stalemate motifs') with a number of examples. In the second part of the lesson students have to solve 12 exercises on the theme.

Yusupov himself again in the introduction: "This manual is intended for the many club players who unfortunately receive nu support in attempts to master our complicated sport. In ths way it's intended as a substitute for a trainer...".

Artur Yusupov was ranked No. 3 in the world from 1986 to 1992, just behind the legendary World Champions Karpov and Kasparov. He has won everything there is to win in chess except for the World Championship. In recent years he has mainly worked as a chess trainer with players ranging from current World Champion Anand to local amateurs in Germany, where he resides.

IM John Donaldson, JeremySilman.com:
"Very helpful for almost all players below 2200 who learned how to play chess outside the Soviet Union. With very few exceptions such players have fundamental gaps in thier knowledge."

Read an excerpt