Boost Your Chess 2 (Yusupov's Chess School)

This is the 5th installment of the 9 Vol. series from GM Yusupov. This is one of the 3 Vols. pitched at students below 1800 ELO, but especially if you are from the US, you should probably go through this level even if your rating is quite a bit higher. In this way, you can fill in the gaps in chess knowledge that we Americans tend to have. If you have read my reviews of some of the other volumes, you know how highly I think of this series. Yusupov was No. 3 in the world at one time, behind only Kasparov and Karpov, so he is an extremely strong player, and he has very extensive experience in training improving players, so the examples in this series are chosen with great care and insight. The 24 lessons (chapters) in this Vol include King Attacks, Open Files, Simple Rook Endings, a White repertoire against the French, Calculating short variations (harder than it sounds!), Typical mistakes in calculations, a repertoire for Black against 1.d4 (the Lasker Var of the QGD, a Yusupov specialty), and Endgame technique. Each lesson is followed by a related test. Yusupov expects you to play through every single move on a board, to write down your exercise answers in detail, and to use no computers. By the time you have worked through all five volumes up to this point, read many of his supplemental recommendations, playing in tourneys, studying your games in depth, and playing through many annotated master games, you will have accumulated quite a bit of vital chess knowledge. Probably, your rating will climb above the rating 'ceiling' for this book before you finish it and Vol. 6, but don't cheat yourself by skipping any volumes. In this way you will be flesh out your chess education thoroughly, and quite likely this will help you avoid the prolonged ratings plateaus that plague most players. This is the highest quality chess material that I have ever seen, and I think that any individual that works carefully through this whole series will be at a great advantage in the typical US weekend Swiss tourney, and even in large open tournaments. School coaches should also seriously consider this series as a curriculum for their team to work through. Very highly recommended.

Artur Yusupov is just a great teacher of chess. He was a candidate master holding the #3 spot in the world in his day but is an even better teacher. I worked with him a few years ago and he was the nicest, most patient man you could ever meet. His style of teaching is so easy to absorb. Take all your other chess books off your shelf and bury them somewhere. BUY THE ENTIRE SERIES!! No joke. There are 9 books the first series for beginner, the next 3 are intermediate and the last 3 are for advanced. These books were awarded the FIDE (that's the international chess federation) award for best overall series for learning chess. And now I see why. They are simply the BEST. I am currently going through them now myself and I am seeing drastic improvment in a very short period of time. I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

This book looks appropriate for USCF 1800, my son continue to learn from this book. The whole series is organized well.