Chess Lessons

“In the Russian school of chess (the English school of chess is more difficult to define unless holding

weekend tournaments in educational establishments counts) such accidents would be carefully

eliminated with rigorous training programmes, and this technique is detailed in a book entitled

Chess Lessons by Vladimir Popov. The author follows several of his pupils, the best-known of whom

are the Kosintseva sisters, currently ranked numbers four and five on the female rating list, showing

the training positions on which he has tested them and relevant fragments from their games. This

kind of book can be rather heavy going, but this interplay has a certain charm and is cheering when

his students make plenty of mistakes as well.”

GM Michael Adams

 

“Working through the many examples in each chapter will provide the reader with a good

understanding of the topic at hand, and the end-of-chapter problems will likely present a challenging

test for most readers.

I would suggest that this book is especially suitable for players roughly in the 1600-2000 range,

although I suspect that higher-rated players will benefit as well, touching up their weak spots.”

Steve Goldberg

“Another inspiring book is Vladimir Popov’s Chess Lessons… a typical high-quality chess

improvement book… Most of the games in this book were unknown to me (refreshingly, many are

taken from top women’s games) and the commentary contains enough food for thought to rethink

your our faults and shortcomings. For instance, the ‘too much calculation’ phenomenon seems to me

typical of a particular group of club players who are very good at calculation but have little notion of

strategic concepts. If only they would all read this book!”