BUILD UP YOUR CHESS 1: THE FUNDAMENTALS
Author: Artur Yusupov
Quality Chess (2008)
262 pages
$29.95

Reviewed by Jeremy Silman

I find this to be an odd book. The first thing that seems a bit off kilter is having a World Championship candidate like Yusupov teaching basic mates, pins, basic opposition, etc. Yusupov’s writing in more advanced books (for example, OPENING PREPARATION with Dvoretsky) is nothing less than fantastic, so to see that talent used here is a bit disappointing. But okay, if he wants to teach amateurs then that’s great news (for amateurs), if the material is something that’s worthwhile (I never give anyone a free pass).

And that takes us to the book itself. The material (if I’m grokking this correctly) is for players under 1500. However, it’s clear that you are expected to already know how to move the pieces and understand quite a few bits about various chess basics (so perhaps the rating spread is 1000 to 1500).

In Chapter 1, we’re given a few mating motifs: Mate along open lines, Anastasia’s Mate, the Arabian mate, the queen-bishop battery, the queen-rook battery, and Boden’s mate. He gives very brief descriptions of these mates, most of which resemble the kind of explanations found in any good chess encyclopedia. For example, here’s what he says about Anastasia’s mate: “This is a spectacular combination, in which the attacking side uses the combined power of queen, rook and knight.” Two examples of this mate follow. That’s not very thrilling. There’s actually a lot of history concerning Anastasia’s mate, which makes the whole subject fun and human (The Oxford Companion to Chess tells us that the name was taken from a 1803 novel by Wilhelm Heinse).

The discussion about the Arabian mate is even more literary and energetic: “This is a very old motif in which rook and knight deliver the mate.” That’s it! There follows three examples and on we go to the next mate.

After all these little introductions to the topic at hand, Yusupov then presents a bunch of exercises testing whether or not we have learned our lessons properly, followed by “Scoring,” which tells us if we were excellent, good, or merely passed (if we got less than a pass, we’re instructed to go back and try it all again).

We get a lot more prose in chapter three (Basic Opening Principles) – a bit less than 3.5 pages worth. The exercises and solutions follow, ending in the ubiquitous “Scoring” routine.

Other topics (all designed as the chapters above) are: Simple Pawn Endings, Double Check, The Value of the Pieces, The Discovered Attack, Centralizing the Pieces, Mate in Two Moves, The Opposition, The Pin, The Double Attack, Realizing a Material Advantage, Open Files and Outposts, Combinations, Queen Against Pawn, Stalemate Motifs, Forced Variations, Combinations Involving Promotion, Weak Points, Pawn Combination, The Wrong Bishop, Smothered Mate, Gambits, etc.

Obviously, if you’re under 1500 and you reacquaint yourself to all this material and then try and solve all those problems, it can’t help but be useful. And if you teach beginners or children, these problems might make your life much easier since they can be used in a class or individual format. But I found the book as a whole to be lacking in energy and almost devoid of humor. Some will like that since their motto is, “Chess is a very serious game!” However, I feel that a nimble pen can go a long way to making chess study fun, interesting, and memorable. BUILD UP YOUR CHESS 1: THE FUNDAMENTALS is much too stodgy for my tastes, but if “stodgy” is your favorite flavor, then this might well be the book for you.

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