Customer Reviews

Chess Strategy for the Tournament Player (Comprehensive Chess Course Series)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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!

As the other reviewers stated, this book covers the usual suspects, like bishops versus knights, ranks/files, weak and strong squares, etc.

What this book does, that the others haven't for me, is pull it all together. His examples, not only show how to create an advantage, but also show how to USE that advantage to create advantages for your other pieces or as the center piece of an attack.

I've read several tactical books and can solve most of the challenges, but never seem to be able to create strong combinations in real games. This book has made the practical use of tactics also more clear _ as a player accumulates strategic advantages their opponents defenses begin to break down naturally, creating the opportunity for tactical blows or a break-through into enemy territory.

Obviously, there is nothing earth shattering about what I'm saying here. But the clarity of the examples and connections that Alburt/Palatnik make, have made these concepts usable to me in games I play _ I've only had the book a couple of days and I already see a big difference in the complexity of positions I am creating.

I definitely recommend.

I am fairly new to tournament level chess (USCF ~1400), and this book did outline some good points about strategic thinking in chess which has helped my game. I wouldn't say that GM Alburt has come up with anything Earth-shattering here, but the games he has chosen to illustrate his points are clear examples of how the abstract concepts he outlines have real effects on games. The text is easy to follow, and tries to keep things simple for the beginning player. It was probably worth the investment for me.

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.

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.

This is responsible for me being an expert strength chess player, and rising. This and Fred Reinfeld's 1001 combos book, for practice. Don't put the cart before the horse, studying advanced strategy while you routinely leave pieces hanging or get checkmated. LEARN TO PLAY