Looks at Books
A Rock-Solid Curriculum
A useful and versatile teaching method by one of Chess Life’s most popular columnists
By GM BEN FINEGOLD
HESS FOR THE GIFTED & BUSY,
by Lev Alburt and Al Lawrence, promises to be a comprehensive chess
course taking even the most basic beginners, not even knowing how any piece
moves, to expert level. But therein lies the
question: can you get from absolute beginner to 2000 USCF after only 300 pages?
Don’t get me wrong, Chess for the Gifted &
Busy encourages you to play as much
chess as possible (even dedicating two
whole pages suggesting the reader join a
chess club), but do you really only need
this one book until you turn 2000 USCF?
What really stands out about this book
is the format. It is divided conveniently
into three levels—Level One: basic rules,
Level Two: practical tournament ready,
and Level Three: advanced concepts.
These levels are divided into 24 digestible
lessons each with, and this might be my
favorite part, a small italicized summary
starting with something like “In this lesson you will learn ...” What makes this so
useful? Imagine if at the end of the lesson, you feel as if you haven’t learned the
concept they promised, you can go back
and read it again. However, if you’re not
entirely sure what you were supposed to
learn in the first place, how will you know
if you have succeeded in learning it? Also,
as with many comprehensive chess
courses, there are small tests (they call
“Memory Makers”) at the end to ensure
that you not only understand the lesson,
but also can put it to practical use. If I
was to make a small change to the format
it would be to put the endgame section
earlier than it is in the book. As it stands,
the book covers endgame concepts in lessons 13 through 18, but I would consider
moving this chunk of lessons to the beginning of level two (which would be lesson
three). However this might only be a matter of taste, I just remember José Raúl
Capablanca saying something along the
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Chess Life — July 2012
lines of “In order to improve your game,
you must study the endgame before
everything else, for whereas the endings
can be studied and mastered by themselves, the middlegame and the opening
must be studied in relation to the
endgame.”
Chess for the Gifted & Busy,
by Lev Alburt & Al Lawrence, Russell Enterprises,
2011, 304 pages, $19.95
from uscfsales.com (B0018LV)
The information in this 300 page curriculum is rock solid. I have taught my
own students the same ideas and only
hope I explained it as well as the authors
in this book. I am also impressed with certain sections in the book where there will
be a shaded rectangle with an important
bit of information in bold. Of the examples
I could have chosen this one really sticks
out to me: “Don’t try to memorize the
move. Remember the method.” It seems
that these tidbits are not only very important, but also versatile and useful for all
parts of chess. That last quote was taken
from the section explaining king and rook
against king checkmate, but could be
applied to any part of the book. The book
is also enjoyable to read. I remember reading a Neil McDonald book in which he
started every chapter with a famous quote.
I don’t know who exactly started this
trend, as I’m sure it’s been done before,
but it’s always enjoyable for me. I believe
also that to become a great chess player
you should be familiar with chess history, and these quotes from Capablanca,
Bobby Fischer, Savielly Tartakower, etc.
instill a sort of chess culture within the
reader that should not be taken for
granted.
All that being said I would consider it
impossible to write a 300-page book with
all the information needed to becoming an
expert. You would need to put a heavy
weight on the “Gifted” part in Chess for the
Gifted & Busy. It simply is not enough
room to put down everything you need and
this becomes rather apparent near the
end of the book. Level Three concepts like
“The Isolani” get a mere four pages as
does “Compensation for Sacrificed Material” when whole books could be (and
have been) written on such subjects. This
is not as much the authors’ faults as
much as the idea itself, and I believe
Alburt and Lawrence did the best they
could. I would recommend this book to
anyone from just beginning to about 1800
USCF. If I had a studen t that was higher
rated and particularly talented tactically,
but not so much strategically, I could recommend the lessons in Level Three as a
start, but we would need to delve more
deeply into them.
This book gets 41⁄2 out of 5 stars.
.
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