build up your chess 1 - Yusupov

Yusupov's 9-part series, Boost your chess, Build up your chess and Evolution series is the 2009 winner of the Boleslavsky Medal from FIDE (the World Chess Federation) as the best instructional chess books in the world (ahead of Garry Kasparov and Mark Dvoretsky in 2nd and 3rd place).

This first book in the Build up your Chess series is for chess players who want to build their skills on solid foundations. Yusupov guides the reader towards a higher level of understanding using carefully selected positions and advice. This new understanding is then tested by a series of puzzles.

The covered subjects include:

1. Mating motifs 
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

Who should read this book? 
This book comes highly recommended for players with ratings of less than 1100.

The book forms part of a 9-part series that covers (1) the fundamentals, (2) beyond the basics and (3) mastery. For players with ratings of less than 1100 the series offers:

1. Build up your chess 1
2. Boost your chess 1
3. Evolution 1