They give a few examples of themes which can be openings, strategy, tactics or endgame.
Well selected but with much more emphasis on you spending time working on the positions than explanations. Will show the areas which need more work e.g. I think I was good at mating patterns and pawn endgames but bad at outposts.
You will find a lot of it pretty tough though I expect.
I assume you are talking about the Yusopov's Chess School series. I have the first two book in that series, the orange ones with the #1 on the cover and have the third one coming in the mail.
For the most part, I like them. They cover a little of everything; some openings, endgames, tactics, positional things. Based on you Blitz rating here, I think they may be a little more difficult than some other choices. I have seen suggestions from 1500-1800 rating (over the board) for the first books.
Here is a good topic about the books and the first post there has a link to another topic where the books are discussed in some of the posts:
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/yusupovs-award-winning-training-course
So does you suggest me to take the first volume? I'm willing to work hard to solve the esercises and understand them
Why not? You will probably fail quite a lot (no offense) but you will learn from what you miss and see what you need to improve. I believe there are sample chapters if you want to try them.
IMO they are the best learning books you can afford, although you must have a couple of things in mind:
- No prose in them, the language is rather dry (which isn't necessarily a bad thing).
- You must faithfully adopt the reading method suggested by the author if you want to improve- and that method is rather demanding.
Thanks for the comments, I'll probably take the first book and try to work
Here you are. The topics and an example chapter:
http://www.chess.co.uk/downloads/Build-Up-Your-Chess-1-excerpt.pdf
Hi, I read a lot of good rewiews about Yusupov's book series. Anyone has it? Is it good? How are the exercises? What do exactly the books contain? I want to take the first book, what should I take?