Intro part VI: Comprehensive Training Courses

Comprehensive Training

Here are the main ones I am aware of, in no particular order:

The Step Method (Stappenmethode)

  

Chess.com’s Prodigy Course

Artur Yusupov’s 9-volume series

Igor Ivanov’s courses

Lev Alburt’s Comprehensive Chess Course. 

There are actually eight titles in all, I believe, for Alburt’s course.

I haven’t included links, because I don’t sponsor any of them, and I don’t want anyone thinking I’m an affiliate. You can google them easily enough on your own if interested.

Instead, I’m attempting to be comprehensive, and I like photos.

I have no desire to review each of them here; nor am I in a position to do so, not having studied any of them to any significant degree.

This, finally, leads me to the primary point of creating this blog. I’ve decided to study the 9-volume Yusupov series. As far as I can tell, no one has done that yet. Not to completion. If anyone has, they either haven’t written about it, or I cannot locate it.

Here is a point-by-point break down of my goal:

1.     Study a well-written and comprehensive chess course to completion.

2.     Actually, truly study and learn the material.

3.     Stick with one book until it is completed.

4.     Compile a master list of the various tactical themes and strategies that one should expect to learn en route to becoming a Master.

5.     Write about my experiences here.

Points 1-5 will be elaborated on in the next post.

In doing so, I hope to:

·      Provide the first in-depth and comprehensive review available of the Yusupov training course;

·      Determine once and for all the ability for a busy, active adult to improve his chess;

·      And finally, to share my experiences with others in the hopes of my experience being replicated (in the case of my being successful), or at the very least adding to the existing theory of adult chess improvement, and my experiment serve as a platform for others to improve upon in the future.

·      If not alone, then together we shall overthrow the Chess Rating Stagnation Overlord! Okay, sorry for being dramatic…

No, I’m not. Never apologize for being who you are. It’s who you are, after all.