Yusupov's Books and My Training Plan

It feels good to settle on a training plan that gives you an almost tangible feeling of improvement. As you work through your daily routine, you feel yourself doing actual chess work and you know this is the way to improvement. To me, there's not a much worse feeling in my chess journey than preparing some grand plan revolving around a book or project only to feel dejected that the work involved is not what you thought it was going to be and you eventually quit the plan entirely. In these instances, it feels like I put too much weight on the plan, as if it was going to do wonders. It just plain sucks when it doesn't work out and you give up. But you keep trying until you find something perfect for your level that provides the right amount of serious study. 

Enter Artur Yusupov.

I think I found a plan that has been working for over a month now. This is due in large part to re-discovering Artur Yusupov's famous book series. Working through these problems for the last month has given me a bigger sense of accomplishment than re-doing tactics three, four and five times from 1001 Chess Exercises for Club Players--which was my last project. The series I'm talking about is the Build Up Your Chess, Boost your Chess, and Chess Evolution books. There is some confusion over the order since Yusupov chose a slightly strange naming and coloring convention. 

Is blue first or green? Wait, do I do Build Your Chess 1, then Build your Chess 2, or complete one color pattern first? When do I do the Revision and Exam book? At the end, right? Will I ever finish it? How long does this take?

The color order in terms of difficulty is Orange, then Blue, then Green. Each color group has a "Build Up Your Chess" title, a "Boost Your Chess" title, and a "Chess Evolution" title and those are meant to be completed in that order before going to the next color. Orange is The Fundamentals and you do those first, Blue is Beyond the Basics, and Green is the Mastery series. And as far as I understand, there is a Revision and Exam book that you should complete after you finish the three orange books. Here's the order for those still wondering

1. Build Up Your Chess 1 (The Fundamentals)
2. Boost Your Chess 1 (The Fundamentals)
3. Chess Evolution 1 (The Fundamentals)
4. Revision and Exam
5. Build Up Your Chess 2 (Beyond the Basics)
6. Boost Your Chess 2 (Beyond the Basics)
7. Chess Evolution 2 (Beyond the Basics)
8. Build Up Your Chess 3 (Mastery)
9. Boost Your Chess 3 (Mastery)
10. Chess Evolution 3 (Mastery)

Finish them all and you've completed the Yusupov Challenge.

That sounds scary...But possible...I suppose. Right? I've never heard of anyone doing it but I can only imagine it'd do wonders to fill in the gaps in your chess knowledge, which is what Yusupov claims his books will do. My plan is to complete the orange series and I think this will do a lot to get me closer to 2000 OTB. Every chapter I do out of book 1 teaches me a few new things and requires me to calculate a lot more than doing those simple 1001 Exercises books. And it's more than just categorized tactics. Let's get into the book I'm currently working on.


Build Up Your Chess 1: The Fundamentals
Yep, I started at the beginning. Duh. I believe I started it about a year ago but I recently picked it back up again and I'm glad. The book, and this goes for every book in the entire series I believe, has 24 chapters covering a broad range of topics. Here's the chapter list for this book:

1 - Mating motifs 1
2 - Mating motifs 2
3 - Basic opening principles
4 - Simple pawn endings
5 - Double Check
6 - The value of the pieces
7 - The discovered attack
8 - Centralizing the pieces
9 - Mate in two moves
10 - The opposition
11 - The pin
12 - The double attack
13 - Realizing a material advantage
14 - Open files and outposts
15 - Combinations
16 - Queen against pawn
17 - Stalemate motifs
18 - Forced variations
19 - Combinations involving promotion
20 - Weak points
21 – Pawn combinations
22 - The wrong bishop
23 - Smothered mate
24 - Gambits
Final test

Pretty good start huh? And each chapter has an introduction then 12 problems to solve and grade yourself on. I love the structure and that's a key to finding a book to work through. I'm pretty familiar with most of the information he provides but the quiz section has put me to work--especially on the positional stuff. I am two-thirds of the way through and it's going great. I'm tracking percentages on the point totals for each quiz so I know my weak points for review later.

If each book has 24 chapters (plus a final test of 24 problems) and I complete all three orange books, that's 936 problems to solve. That's not including the eight to ten example problem he uses in the introduction for each chapter. If I take my time with all these, I'll surely fill in a lot of knowledge gaps and work on my calculation while doing so! I'd have to think this will be one of the best 3-book series to work through. For someone at my intermediate level, it's a great balance between review of things I've seen before and calculation in the harder problems in the quizzes. 

Here's a youtube video of Artur being interviewed in 2017 about the series.

Openings

The only other chess work I'm doing is working to build up a stronger opening repertoire for white. At the moment, this means making my digital flashcards of positions with an essay-question like prompt and then entering the solution with all variations and ideas/plans in a text file. I've began the project with a book called Starting Out: 1. d4. It's a good introduction to all the things you'll likely see as a d4 player but I find it quite theoretical unfortunately. I'm going through most of the lines and taking screenshots of all interesting positions for my flashcard system anyway, but I absolutely need more than this. We all know that most openings at my level are not played in the same way that masters play them. The Starting Out... book does not cover a lot of "doozies" (Tothian-speak for blunders or mistakes) in the openings so I need to fill these in myself. My idea is to eventually have a large set of flashcards for each major opening family and here's how I plan to build them:

• All interesting positions showcasing strategic plans and ideas from the Starting Out book for any openings I see often--I won't worry about Dutch or offbeat replies to 1. d4 for the moment. 
• Review these positions and add in any other questions. Add in the information to the solutions.txt or make new position screenshots if needed.
• Play through the illustrative games from the book and make more flashcards.
• Use Lichess' opening library but filter the games so it only shows moves from "non-masters", i.e. players below 2000 rating. This will show more doozies than were brought up in the Starting Out... book. Make screenshots of all these positions with prompts and solutions. This is probably the most important bullet point since I'll see more of these types of moves than, for example, perfect theory on move 10 of the slav.
• Continually make flashcards of positions in my own games where my opponent plays something weird or out-of-book. Or if I mis-play my repertoire.
• Go through Chess Structures by Flores and make more cards and notes on those positions.
• If I need more, go through Zurich 1953 and find games in my repertoire.

Whew! That's a lot and probably more than I'll ever do but I'm more convinced than ever that this will serve as a huge boost to my comfort level during the opening stages.

Conclusion

That's it! Openings and the Yusupov Book. I've lately been working on the opening flashcard system for a few mornings and nights a week, and then the Yusupov book during the workday when it's slow. I can generally do one chapter every two or three days. The opening work is slower and I've yet to begin reviewing my cards but I really hope I can stick with that. My idea is that the opening flaschards are tailored specifically to my game and the Yusupov books will be general chess work ranging from tactics to strategy and endgames. It's a simple enough plan I think! I realize this goes against my advice to "just do it" instead of telling everyone your perfect training plan, but I'm very excited about it and it's been working for a solid month! Good luck to any readers looking to find a routine that works for them.