positional chess

A strong command of middlegame skills often makes the difference between winning and losing a game of chess. The art of positional play must be included in any list of those skills. ‘First Steps in Positional Play’ attempts to equip the viewer with all the information he or she needs to begin to tackle this aspect of chess. Players below 1500 will benefit from this basic advice. Players above 1500 will enjoy the detailed examination of many current master games. This is an enjoyable tour of positional play from which everyone can learn.

Positional sacrifices, improving piece placement, defence in worse positions, prophylaxis, and building and breaking fortresses, are skills every club player needs to master in order to win more games. Junior World Champion Daniel Naroditsky teaches very practical lessons, based on his own experience. Daniel Naroditsky (1995) turns out to be not only a remarkable chess prodigy, but also a born writer and instructor who gives crystal-clear verbal explanations on the essence of positional chess. In a special introduction Daniel?s parents tell the story of how their son wrote this book. An astonishing work and an instructive delight.

A top chess coach explains the fundamentals of chess strategy to amateur players. Herman Grooten, an International Master with over 25 years of experience, has written a systematic primer about the basics of positional understanding, with a massive amount of examples and exercises.

212 Surprising Checkmates by Bruce Alberston and Fred Wilson (2011)
Bird's Opening: Detailed Coverage of an Underrated and Dynamic Choice for White (2005)
Grandmaster versus Amateur by John Shaw and Jacob Aagaard (2011)
Positional Chess Sacrifices by Mihai Suba (2012)
The Strategic Nimzo-Indian: A Complete Guide to the Rubinstein Variation by Ivan Sokolov (2012)
The Torre Attack: Move by Move by Richard Palliser (2012)

Raise your chess to the next level with this program of 600 instructive and challenging exercises covering all aspects of the game. This book will sharpen your tactical vision, deepen your positional understanding, and enrich your knowledge of theoretical positions. It will also strengthen your analytical skills, and instill a sound move selection process. Win more games and increase your enjoyment of chess!

Collins took more than 100 chess maxims from his teaching, chess history, chess masters and writers and categorized such that they can be used as a checklist during a game. They illustrated how to use each piece (King, Queen, Rook, Bishop, Knight and Pawn) where and where most efficiently. Each stage of chess game (Opening, Middle game and Endgame) has its own set of maxims. There is a chapter about Exchange. And there are four more chapters about the topics that sometimes I feel I understand what they are and many times I just can't tell what they really are. Those topics are: Tactical Play, Positional Play, Combinations and Strategy. Each maxim in the book has a master game or endgame study to go with it for clarification. The final chapter is about a philosophy of chess, which has no games. The author had a wishful thinking that Fischer would come back and dominate chess again. The book was written in 1978. Fifteen years later, there comes another similar book, "The Tao of Chess." Comparing "Tao" to "Maxims", the former is about fifteen percent as good as the latter. Maxims passes the test of time and is good enough for beginning to immediate level....

Sacrifices are an essential part of chess. Those who never consider sacrificing will miss countless opportunities and find that promising positions repeatedly slip away. Players who do not appreciate their opponents' sacrificial possibilities will be unable to see danger signs, and find themselves on the wrong end of too many king-hunts. Rather than merely cataloguing the various possibilities and providing examples, LeMoir discusses the possible follow-ups to the sacrifices, the defensive options against them, and the positional factors that might suggest whether the sacrifice will be sound or unsound. There are many important types of chess positions that can only be played well by those who understand the thematic sacrifices that are possible. ...

This book follows on from Kotov's previous work "Think Like a Grandmaster". It is a guide to chess-playing for the amateur player. The book covers positional judgement, planning, combinational vision and calculation and practical play - each with many examples. One customer from Amazon commented: "Kotov's writing style is very readable and his advice is great.His teaching is unique and very helpful indeed.The examples he gives are great too(especially see the chapter on combinations--it's mindblowing).This book will not necessarily make you a grandmaster,but I don't think you'll become one without it"

Clear, straightforward guide by noted expert coaches readers through fundamentals of attacking and positional play, as well as how to approach the endgame. Crucial processes of assessing positions and choosing moves are examined in depth; also, how to cope with difficult positions and time-trouble. 384 diagrams.

This third volume in Mark Dvoretsky’s School of Chess Excellence series is devoted to questions of strategy aimed at improving the reader’s positional understanding. The author also examines a number of positions that lie on the boundary between the middlegame and the endgame. As in the other books in the series, Dvoretsky uses examples from his own games and those of his pupils as well as episodes from other players’ games. ...

25 chess games chosen, arranged, and annotated to help amateurs learn how to avoid a variety of weak strategic and tactical moves. Selected, with commentary, by World Chess Champion Max Euwe and by Walter Meiden, an amateur player, the games point out graphically how the chess master exploits characteristic errors of the amateur.