Book review | Yusupov's Build Up Your Chess: The Fundamentals

Anyone who’s looked for books that may improve their chess has probably come across Yusupov’s 9-book training course. The series has won a number of awards, and Yusupov himself is well-known in the chess scene both as a strong player and trainer/second. The series is over a decade old, and is divided into three levels: The Fundamentals (Orange books; u1500), Beyond the Basics (Blue books; u1800) and Mastery (Green books; u2100). In each level there are three 24-chapter books (Build Up Your Chess, Boost Your Chess, and Chess Evolution), and each chapter consists of training material and a test, while each book has a final test at the end, covering all the material.

As a fairly poor (read: lazy) adult chess student rated around 1700 OTB, I decided to try out the first orange book (Build Up Your Chess: The Fundamentals) to see how successful I would be in completing an entire chess book, and also to see how easy I found the material: the orange books are said to be aimed at u1500s, but reviews say the material is more appropriate for those rated 1500-1800. Here’s my overall experience, which’ll hopefully help you out if you’re trying to decide if you should try the book(s) yourself.

BACKGROUND

When I started the book, I was probably rated around 1700 FIDE with years of competitive OTB experience under my belt, but I had very shaky fundamentals as a result of minimal coaching or study throughout my chess career. Without much of a chess background, I struggled to complete entire chess books, having only succeeded in completing ‘The Amateur’s Mind’ by Silman and having completed maybe 10 to 50 percent of a number of other chess materials. I do have an academic background, though, and I am someone who achieves higher success with goal-oriented study or “gamified” study, so prior to attempting this book I’d worked through a number of chess.com lessons and as a result my knowledge of things like simple endgames (e.g. king and pawn, opposite-coloured bishops) was good for someone who has otherwise done very little chess study.

Yusupov gives the following advice for working through his books:

• Play through all the variations and examples on a chessboard
• Do not use engine assistance
• Write down all the necessary variations
• Play through the solutions and all variations on a chessboard

The most time-consuming of the above is to play everything through on a physical chessboard. I did this for most of the book, but given how slowly I was progressing, I ended up only setting up positions from the last few chapters on a physical or digital board if I couldn’t visualize the entire variation in my head. Other than that, I followed Yusupov’s instructions pretty carefully, and I put a good amount of effort into studying the material and attempting the practice tests. I usually studied an entire chapter in one sitting, and then completed (and marked) the test in a separate study session.

MY EXPERIENCE

Overall, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to other players at a similar level to me who are prepared to put in some hard work, but who also struggle to complete an entire chess book. I found the chapters took me between 30 minutes and 2 hours to work through, depending on the topic, and each test took a similar amount of time to attempt fully and mark my solutions. This worked well for me in that it was possible to fit an entire chapter or test into a study session without having to interrupt it (or recap what I learnt in a previous session), and it gave me a sense of accomplishment to be able to finish something in a single study session. Procrastination was also less likely as I knew beforehand that each chapter would take a maximum of two hours, unlike some chess books where chapters can differ significantly in length and difficulty (which makes starting a chapter more daunting).

Other readers mentioned that the book is more like a textbook than a book, and I tend to agree – it requires hard work to get through the book, but the structure really facilitates active learning, and if you attempt the tests it’s a great way to show if you learnt the concepts or not (rather than just assuming that you understand the work, which is what I tend to do in more traditional chess books without a dedicated test at the end of each chapter).

MY RESULTS (AS A 1700-1800)

Some of the chapters were very easy for me, some were not as easy as I assumed them to be, and some I found incredibly difficult to study, even though my intuition for a lot of those chapters was correct. Something I found incredibly useful was that each chapter was categorized, and for each test problems had different difficulty levels and marks were awarded for partially correct answers in order to give an overall “grade” for the chapter. I kept track of my scores, both in terms of the category and the grade (also keeping track of which chapters I got 100% on) – this can be seen in the table below:

Overall grade of chapters by category:

As can be seen above (and from my experience working through the chapters too), the easiest chapters for me involved tactics. It’s very clear that other aspects of my play are not at the same level as my tactics (although I did better in the strategy and positional play chapters than I thought I would), and this is where a book such as this is valuable even for players rated higher than 1800 – it gives an indication of what areas of your chess you may need to work on, which can be hard to identify without the help of a coach.

In four of the chapters, I achieved 100% score on the test, and I achieved an “excellent” grade on half the chapters. This being said, I did have to work hard on a lot of the chapters where I scored well – I did not fly through 50% of the book with ease and only struggle with the ones I received a score of less than “excellent” for (full chapter list with my scores here, for those interested). In retrospect, I think I worked a little too hard on the tests as I was aiming for 100% in all the tests – only after I finished the book, did I see Yusupov say in an interview he doesn’t expect players to get all the solutions correct, as some of the problems are incredibly difficult. I think I would have moved a lot faster through the book and enjoyed the process a little more if I hadn’t been trying so hard to solve every problem correctly, as I think I did take more than 15 minutes agonizing over some test problems.

An example of one of the frustrating problems:

White to move and mate in two (only one solution)

The chapter I failed was Queen against pawn on the 7^th rank – I had studied this topic previously and I was overconfident in this chapter, so I incorrectly evaluated a number of positions as drawn when it was instead won (or vice versa) when I took the test. The other chapter that stands out in my mind is the one on mates in two – I found this chapter incredibly frustrating and only just managed a pass on the test (nearly rage-quitting mid-way): I wrote an entire article about this chapter here. On the final test of the book, I scored 37 out of a possible 47 points, losing points on problems involving positional play, calculating variations, strategy and endgames – this once again highlighted the weaker areas in my game.

RECOMMENDATIONS

• If you’re under 1500 (or even on the lower side of 1500-1800), know that the book will not be easy and you may get frustrated with the chapters – if this is likely to stop you from completing the book or working through the book properly, rather try this book when you’re higher rated and will find the material less daunting/frustrating.
• Don’t dismiss this book if you’re over 1800 – you could perhaps do the tests and only study the chapters you underperform on.
• Keep in mind that this book doesn’t read like a usual chess book – explanations are limited and the majority of the benefit comes from spending time understanding the examples and practicing the themes by solving the test problems. If you prefer descriptive explanations, anecdotes and stories in your chess studying material then you may battle to work through this book.
• Avoid the temptation of just playing through the examples and solving problems in your head without writing down the solutions – much of the value of this book is in solving the problems yourself, writing down the variations and being honest about if you deserve the points (and pass the chapter).
• Experiment with the pacing – too slow and you’re unlikely to remember much of what you’ve learnt, but going through the book too quickly (especially if you’re lower rated) may mean you don’t fully understand the material covered.

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I hope this review has helped some of you who are looking for more material to study, or those who were specifically looking for reviews of this book. Please let me know in the comments if you have any questions regarding the book, or if you've read the book yourself and have any opinions future (or potential) readers might want to keep in mind!