Don’t Buy Yusupov’s Books

The following text was inspired by WCM Rebecca Selkirk’s review of Yusupov’s “Build Up Your Chess: The Fundamentals”. At first I wanted to write a comment under that review, but since I had the misfortune of buying and studying the books myself, the comment became large enough to warrant a separate blog post.

I own the German originals of the three ‘Fundamentals’ books + the supplementary volume, which is meant to be used alongside the main three. I used them, and if that was not sufficiently clear from the title, let me clearly state that I did not like the books. They are the most overrated chess books in history. Buying them was by far the worst chess-related decision of my life.

The word ‘fundamentals’ doesn’t appear in the German original, the original titles of the books are "Tigersprung auf 1500 / 1800 / 2100 DWZ" [Tiger Leap to 1500 / 1800 / 2100 DWZ]. This post was originally written in 2020, and even before the FIDE rating reform of 2024 your FIDE rating was usually higher than your DWZ, the difference being largest for people between 1900 and 2000 DWZ, their FIDE ratings could be more than 100 points higher. Apparently the idea was that the first books were for pretty much beginners, and then you go from book to book, theoretically gaining 100 rating points with each book. If this was what Yusupov has intended, it does seem like a cruel joke.

The books do have some rather easy positions, but the vast majority are very difficult indeed. GM Rafael Leitão of Brazil once talked about how he tried some of the higher level books from the series, he was already a grandmaster at the time, and he said the positions were so difficult that he wanted to cry. This was a 2600+ grandmaster talking, not a club player on the road to 2100 DWZ.

The following position is the very first position from the supplementary volume, the first chapter is called “Mating motifs.” Do you see the mate?

Good luck with this one. WGM Almira Skripchenko had White here, and she was able to find the right sequence at the board, although in the game Black could have defended better actually. But does someone who just begins making their first tentative steps towards not exactly lofty 1500 level have a chance?

That is exactly the sort of positions you need to give beginners, that is if you want to sap their interest for chess so much that they never go past the first lesson. But really, can you see the mate in the above position? 29. Bc2 is the obvious start, but it looks like the Black king can escape.

In the foreword Yusupov suggests to spend one hour on a chapter. Rebecca Selkirk says that it took her up to two hours to finish a chapter. She is a very experienced player and puzzle solver though. I remember spending a full weekend doing the smothered mate chapter, and I still did poorly on the test.

Rebecca Selkirk hinted at that in her review, but I’d like to specifically mention: Yusupov uses a lot of studies, and those studies are more often than not much more abstract than practical.

There are probably a dozen mates in three from the following position, but only one mate in two:

Perhaps it’s just me, but I don’t like studies, I really don’t. Sometimes there might be occasions when to make your point more clearly you remove some pieces from the board. But I would say those are rare.

Learning Italian will probably help you to become better at Spanish. But if your goal is to be able to read a book in Spanish, you should sign up for a Spanish class, not an Italian class. By the same token, it might be the case that solving studies will help your practical play, but it is a very roundabout way of doing things. If you want to be better at practical play, study positions that arise from practical play.

It’s not that it is hard to find instructive chess positions. I am writing this on November 22, 2020, and in the last 24 hours there were 7,432,717 games played on chess.com alone. If a chess author can’t find an actual game to illustrate a point, it is probably not a point that you will find very applicable to your games.

I remember solving a particularly difficult mate in two study (not from a Yusupov book). After some 10 minutes I found several mates in three, but still no mate in two. So I started to try out every legal move. After another 25 minutes I found the solution, but I didn't feel satisfied, I felt exhausted. I wish I had spent the time and the energy on solving mates in two from real games.

There are scores of instructive mates in two that are being missed in blitz games every single day, missed by average players like myself, and missed by strong grandmasters.

The structure of Yusupov’s books was appealing to me at first, but that was before I started them. For me, there is no rhyme or reason why I should do mates on day 1, learn how to meet the English opening on day 2, and how to defend bishop against pawns endgames the day after that, in this particular order. Maybe today I want to do knight and two extra pawns versus rook endgames, because this is what I had in my most recent game. The books so blatantly disregard the factor of motivation that my only explanation is that Yusupov wrote the books for himself, without having any particular audience in mind.

If you are an attacking player, you should devote more time to checkmating and pawnstorming and less to studying the Berlin endgame. If you play the Exchange Spanish as White and the Scandinavian defence as Black, handling the bishop pair should not be on the top of your priority list. There are so many different styles of play, that any one-size-fits-all from beginner to master course is bound to be a bad idea.

There are many good books on chess improvement, if you have some time and money to spend, buy something else.

Buy a tactics book, a book on middlegame strategy, an endgame book, a book on pawn play, a book on attack, a book on defence, a book on calculation, a book on your favourite opening as White, a book on your favourite defence against 1. e4, and a book on your favourite defence against 1. d4, maybe also a best games collection by your favourite player, and you’ll be good. If you do enjoy solving studies, nothing wrong with that, you can also buy a collection of studies.

But don’t buy Yusupov’s books. I can't find a single thing to say about the books that would justify me actually spending money on them. The only excuse that I have is that they were so hyped on chess forums and blogs. Yusupov is certainly a very fine player, he is probably the best player to have written a complete chess course. But it seems to me that both the idea of a one-size-fits-all chess course and Yusupov’s execution of this idea are not the most direct and certainly not the most enjoyable way to chess improvement.