What do Comprehensive Chess Course 1 and 2 cover?

I found the table of contents for Volume 1. Each chapter is titled how a different piece moves. Yet 224 pages. I wonder what it is really about.

Also, how is 2 different.

Table of contents for each book

Some sample pages from how the knight moves

There are two more diagrams in the knight moves chapter, followed by around 8 exercises, and then the answers to those exercises.

Questions like how many moves does the knight need to capture the pawn (diagram of 1 knight and 1 pawn on a board). There are multiple exercises like this (with one knight and one pawn). Some exercises have more than one pawn. Some exercises are about the queen.

One or two exercises are ridiculously complex or unclear. Most of the book, from my perspective, moves at a painfully slow pace. Maybe a good book for a young child who knows absolutely nothing about chess.

Each lesson starts with a review

I'd say... it gives a lot of technical knowledge in a way that doesn't make that knowledge useful.

For example it mentions that when knights moves they alternate between occupying light and dark squares... ok but this is just random trivia the student would have to memorize.

Better to give an example such as a knight is putting a king in check, and then tell the reader (or have as an exercise) that as long as the king moves to the same color square, it can't be checked again on the next move.

Or ask whether a knight can move between two squares in an odd or even number of moves based on the color of the squares.

Thank you for those bits. If that's all thats in there, then "Russian training methods" either is just a sales pitch, or refers to the later volumes.

Too late. Already bought it. I'll skim through it to see if there are any good drills to make me more fluent a piece repositioning. Then I'll give it and my glass chess set to my landlord to give to their 4 year old later.

Volume 2 teaches how to do basic mates...

Yeah, beginners need volume 2. Tactics books are actually too advanced for them. But I don't plab to buy volume 2.

I got volume 1 used. So that might nix it as a gift. I'll still give it to someone.

For example exercise 8 in the image above (naming squares on a diagonal)... isn't that really hard for a new player (who needed 10 diagrams to learn how the knight moves and captures)?

So it's book 2 that has pieces vs pawns? How many situations? Knights? Bishops? How many pages or problems on pawn stopping? Thanks.

I describe both books here...

Chess Courses - Instructional Resources...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/beginners-chess-course-instructional-resources

By birth, the authors of "Comprehensive Chess Course" - Roman Pelts is Ukranian; Lev Alburt is Russian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Pelts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Alburt

See RussBell's post above - there are links to free PDF downloads of this book and others

I've just checked the legality of that site referenced - you can download the PDFs, but it may well be illegal to do so since these books are still copy-righted.

Thanks. I followed the link, but when it said download pdf, I chickened out for legality and digital paper trail reasons. I'll just buy it used and then give the copy to some weaker friends after I see the stuff I want.

In a different link, I saw the first 12 pages of a different book and determined it was only good for instructors teaching basic beginners.

I am seeing in some beginner books that there is a lot that is not taught in tactics books aimed at 1200 level players. People who just learned the rules or are even 500 need much easier problems, ones ones with just a king, rook and knight on the board, so they can learn forks without clutter.

It gives me an appreciation of how much more skill I have than them, and that I should just give them lessons instead of playing them.

I'm looking for a book that has mobility drills. Get the knight or bishop from here to there without touching those squares,  and more. Or, only using your imagination, how many ways can a knight get from here to there in 4 moves.

I also want into to have chess pieces vs 1-5 pawns in various drills and give answers and principles. 

I hoped Lev Albert's Comprehensive Chess Course had that, but thus far I'm not seeing any evidence of such.

I did order Volume 1. Hopefully he was smart enough to advertise Volume 2 in Volume 1 and give more details.

I have downloaded pdf copies of dozens of books from pdfdrive and from scribd over the years.  I have never experienced any problem of any sort doing this  I can assure you that both sites are safe. 

I would not put myself in jeopardy with chess.com or law enforcement authorities by recommending an action that is unsafe and/or illegal.  I am not aware of any evidence that anyone (in the USA) has been prosecuted or convicted of a crime for downloading pdf copies of books from the internet, for personal use only.  If it were illegal then it makes sense that there would be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who have been convicted of the "crime".  But I've not heard of any such an occurrence. 

I feel comfortable asserting that if you download copies of books (for personal use) from the sites I have recommended, no law enforcement folks will be knocking on your door intending to take you off to jail.

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/scribd-com-for-online-chess-book-reading

If I remember right each lesson was

1.review the chapters you have already read as a warmup

2.read a new chapter

3.answer some questions on the new stuff

4.a page of homework (more questions or puzzles) to be done sometime later

5.play some games 90 minutes

By the way.  If you already know how the pieces move and capture, and are familiar with the basic rules of chess, then Volume 1 of Comprehensive Chess Course, which deals primarily with those items, is not necessary.