Yusupov's award-winning Training Course

If you're talking about Pachman's strategy books, they are quite different, as Yusupov deals with all aspects of the game, and also offers exercises (what you need to improve). I don't know about ICS.

I have the first book, and I have to admit that I am not impressed.  I really tried to like this book and do try to work through it.  The problem is that some of the examples are terrible and seem to have little to do with the topic or help with the 'exam' questions.  This seems to be another case where a very high rated player is writing for an audience (below 1500) that is so far away from his experience that he has forgotten what these players need at this level.

I know I can't recommend his first book to anyone below 1500.  Don't waste your money until you are much higher rated.

Wonder how these compare with Lev Alburt' Chess Training Pocket Book 1 & 2.  A friend recommend them they are supposed to have some really good puzzles also.

I bought the three orange books and have started going through them. I must say they are definately all focused around tactics! About three quaters of the chapters in each books are tactics related. I don't think each chapter will take me 1-2 hours to go through. So far, because I think I am quite strong on tactics, I have just been doing the excersizes!

Yusupov is more thorough and the level is much higher. Nothing wrong with Alburt's books though.

Thanks hicetnunc, going to give the Pocket Books a try.

The number 1 books are for players under 1500

Number 2 for players rated under 1800

Number 3 for players rated over 1800.

Artur calls it how to improve. Reviews calls it how to get 2100.

Yeah... IMHO

• orange to get to 1800
• blue to get to 2000
• green to get to 2200

I've tested the tactical positions in the blue series with players O2000 at my club, and they had a hard time... I won't even talk about the endgame part (same for me btw...)

I am 2000-ish over the board and am going through the first orange book. I love it! I do get most of the exercises correct, and while the * exercises are usually easy, the *** exercises are quite hard (it usually takes me 10 minutes to get them, and I regularly miss some relevant line in my answer). Halfway through the book, this book has already made me work much harder than any other chess book I own.

I can't believe a 1500 player will get much out of them. I think 1700-1800 is a good starting range.

Doing all 9 books means solving more than 2700 tough exercises spread out over all the subjects that chess study involves. It's my life goal for the next few years :-)

i dont know i had it once on a train, shame i lost my book. The tactics seemed pretty easy in his book, i think he even said for what tactic to look for. Well im tactically not strong, but i would think the book wasnt very advanced. I have no otb rating but on first sight (i might be wrong though) yussopovs seemed really simple, but i probably getting another and see maybe its way better then i thought it was. He explains basic stuff like windmills and then you have to look for windmills. 

but i still wondering if the book is good myself, because i only remember the tactics from the books. But on the other hand if Naka used no books maybe chess.com will be enough for me.

I agree the tactics are easy, probably also because I have done a lot of tactics training on chesstempo and the like. They're my strong point already.

The non-tactical chapters are different, e.g. the one on centralization of pieces. When there is no clear tactical answer I find it much harder to decide on the correct answer and lines.

It's good that I practice them, because I'm the type of player who spends far too much time trying to calculate lines even in clearly non-tactical positions.

Which is why I'm going through the orange books even though I'm already 2000, I clearly have big weaknesses.

I think all those GMs who used no books did have trainers. Nakamura certainly did. I also think that most good trainers give lots of hard exercises to do, covering all kinds of positions, like Yusupov does.

ok thank you very much

As a former teacher, I think you get out what you put in.  If you slow down and work, you learn.  Some very advanced books may seem trivial because the author assumes you see the basics but need to dig deeper into the extended lines and subtleties.  I would want to see a true representative sample of opinions from other authors and advanced players before making a decision.  (And, no, I haven't seen the Yusupov series, so I can't speak for or against them.)

In the same vein, the claim (rumor?) that Nakamura used "no books" does not mean that is a recommended study procedure for the rest of the world.  I doubt the rest of the world's IM's would claim that as the only way to study.

why did you say IMs and not GMs?? Not that IMs are inferior teachers, im just wondering because Nakamura is clearly a GM

Not everything in the book is tactics. Moreover, even the "easy" tactics aren't always that easy as Yusopov wants the reader to write down ALL the relevant lines to quiescence, missing nothing. Even when the first move is obvious, analyzing the line out to the end isn't always trivial.  If you just use it like a tactics book finding the first move and moving to the next problem, you likely won't get much out of it. But if you do what the author asks, you'll find it to be a very useful work. 

IM is more inclusive.  I didn't intend for GM's to be excluded in that group, but if I had used GM, the IM's would have been.  Either way is OK, I guess.  The point is that most of us are far below GM or IM level and many (most?) teachers, coaches and authors are IM's.

As I've said in other posts, the best coaches and teachers are seldom the very best at their sports - very very good, yes, but seldom the very best.  Consider football, basketball, soccer, tennis.  Seldom do world champions retire to teach effectively.

For those of you who have the orange books, do you do a whole chapter in one go or do you do a little bit (say about 10-30mins) each day?

Depends on the day, my schedule and the chapter. I've sat down and spent a couple hours straight on one chapter, and I've broken it up over a few days. 

I'm personally of the view that a little bit of work every day shows better results than the same amount of work done in one sitting. But I don't base that on any experience learning or teaching  chess but with similar experiences in trying to learn subjects in other fields such as languages, math, and music. 

Okay, that is interesting