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

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!

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.

Unlike the first review says, this is not a bad book at all. It is actually quite good. In fact, I agree with C. Diniz's review about it being a good book for intermediate level players who want to breach the expert level status.Lev Alburt writes very good books, and I am happy I ordered all of the Comprehensive Book Series: Tactics, Strategy, Attack on the King, and I believe he also has some books on Openings and Endgames.In summary, the diagrams are displayed quite frequently throughout the book, making the reading much more comprehensible as the title suggests. I would suggest it very much.

This book improved my game noticeably and I only read a little of it. Admittedly, I still need lots of improvement. I don't have much time to study, but this book is efficient. It is an easy read without wit and historical background-- just the facts, followed by a couple of examples of the principles presented.

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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.

This is a good book if you are ranked between 1400-1800 Elo Rating level. I strongly recommend you to go through the book by your own and then use an engine to double check the variations given by the author then you will learn more. The explanations are ok. Complement this with other authors like Dvoretsky or Silman and you are all set!

Rien de révolutionnaire mais le livre vous donnera les grands principes stratégiques nécessaires dans la partie d'échecs