Chess Strategy for the Tournament Player, Revised and Expanded Edition (Comprehensive Chess Course)

Author - Lev Alburt ... [Goo?] [Posters]
Author - Sam Palatnick ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Paperback Book item from Chess Information & Research Center was reviewed on 13-Oct-2008.

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1) Paperback Book Chess Strategy for the Tournament Player, Revised and Expanded Edition (Comprehensive Chess Course) by Chess Information & Research Center. It never ceases to amaze me why so many are so quick to trash Alburt´s Comprehensive Chess series. I studied this book Chess Strategy as well as the rest in the series awile ago. I can say without a doubt they helped me establish a very firm foundation in chess. It was through the knowledge in these books that I was able to progress to more advanced works & actually understand these advanced concepts!

So many put the cart before the horse in these days of ´instant gratfication.´ If you are below 2200 & are reading works by Dvoretsky, Nimzovitch, Yussopv, etc. you are wasting your time! To reap the full rewards of the above mentioned authors you must have a very solid chess foundation! ALburt´s Comprehensive Chess Series provides this foundation! These books are meant to be studied & not breezed through in a few weeks....digest them! Some say Alburt´s books are too simplistic.....well they are meant to be this way so as to be undestood by many. This in no way detracts from the valuable information therein though!

After finishing the Comprehensive Chess Course my USCF rating shot up to 1925. I then purchased some other works by Euwe, Marovic, & Chernev. I studied these works and broke the 2000 barrier. Once I was here I started to pour over opening theory & understand it easily enough....this lead me to my current rating of 2110. So as it relates to me I did not need a 100+ book chess library to attain this level of play. Again this is because of a solid foundation provided by ALburt´s series of books! If there is one important lesson I learned myself by reading this series it is the importance of developing an organized & sound thinking technique! This is something the student must aquire on his own & one can learn it by studying Alburt´s series!¤

2) Paperback Book Chess Strategy for the Tournament Player, Revised and Expanded Edition (Comprehensive Chess Course) by Chess Information & Research Center. Like the previous two books in the Comprehensive Chess Course series, this book gives the impression of having been slapped together in a weekend.

The selection of ideas (good vs bad bishop, weak and strong squares, etc) is mundane. This book adds nothing in that area. Reshevsky´s Art of Positional Play is much better.

The selection of games and positions to illustrate these ideas is also particularly uninspired. Pachman´s Complete Chess Strategy does a much better job selecting material.

The lack of commentarty and analysis borders on the obscene for a book that claims it will help me become a master. I´ve given games of speed chess more thorough analysis than this. Where the analysis seems particularly educational and/or thorough, you can be sure it is merely a recompilation of previously published analysis. As just a couple (of many) examples, the analysis of Botvinnik-Boleslavsky (p182) comes from Botvinnik´s 100 Selected Games, and the analysis of Tarrasch-Lasker (p217) comes from Reti.

Worst of all, analysis from earlier sources is uncritically poached without the slightest attempt at verification. For example, the analysis of MilnerBarry-ZnoskoBorovsky (p182) is taken from Euwe´s Judgment & Planning in Chess. In that book, Euwe ends with "if 24....fxe5, White plays 25.Qg6 Bf6 the game is decided by the invasion of the rooks by means of 26. Rfc1 with the idea of 27.Rc7." Alburt & Palatnik copy this sentence almost verbatim. What Euwe missed (and Alburt & Palatnik didn´t even bother to look for) is that Black has 26....e4 27.Rc7 Qxd4+ as a perfectly good defense and White is down a bishop for nothing.

You will learn nothing from this book; save your money.¤

3) Paperback Book Chess Strategy for the Tournament Player, Revised and Expanded Edition (Comprehensive Chess Course) by Chess Information & Research Center. I think this book does an ok job covering a variety of strategies designed to make you play stronger in tournaments. This is part of a series of books with mainly Lev Albert behind them using his Russian School of Chess Methods. These methods need to be improved on to fit into today´s world.
It doesn´t begin to compair to "Winning Chess Tournaments for Juniors", which was recently released.
¤

4) Paperback Book Chess Strategy for the Tournament Player, Revised and Expanded Edition (Comprehensive Chess Course) by Chess Information & Research Center. The least I can say is that this book is better than his first two books in the author´s series, which I didn´t like because it was designed for a teacher who didn´t know chess to be able to go through it and teach the Russian masses.
I would say this book is ok, but there are really no secrets as you are lead to believe.¤

5) Paperback Book Chess Strategy for the Tournament Player, Revised and Expanded Edition (Comprehensive Chess Course) by Chess Information & Research Center. I really improved after reading this book. I read this book on a plane ride to California (from Buffalo) and during my trip (4 days). I finished it a couple days after returning (about a week and a half total on the book).

I did not have a board, but I visualized the board from the diagram as there were enough for me to do so. I enjoyed the examples and thought they were very useful in teaching the material.

In any case, a couple weeks later, I won the Under 1600 section of the New York State Chess Championship. I´m not saying that this book was the only reason for doing this, but I learned much and was inspired by the positional play in all of the examples I read.

My only criticism is that there wasn´t enough analysis behind some of the moves where the author makes a statement such as "and of course move x was terrible" and doesn´t explain it. However, in my specific case, this was good, as I couldn´t really analyze too many variations anyway, and instead was able to get the ideas behind the strategies explained.

I highly recommend this book as well as "Chess Tactics for the tournament Player" by the same author.¤

6) Paperback Book Chess Strategy for the Tournament Player, Revised and Expanded Edition (Comprehensive Chess Course) by Chess Information & Research Center. The revised edition of the classic that takes the mystery out of long-term planning in chess.

Chess Strategy for the Tournament Player is the fifth volume in Grandmaster Lev Alburt´s Comprehensive Chess Course series. Endorsed by world champion Gary Kasparov as revealing "the once-secret Russian method of chess training," this new edition has material on the 2006 Absolute World Championship match between Kramnick and Topalov.¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 10-Nov-2008, 18893231609781889323169, 201-281-361-441-521-601-8

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