Understanding the Position, resources please

My new goal in chess is to 'understand the position' or at least start working in that direction!

Any resources that anyone found actually helpful? When I say helpful, I mean understandable to most people of average to above average intellegence.

Just a clueless person trying to catch a clue!

Herman Grooten : Chess strategy for club players.
Working my way through it now, takes time but very good !

http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review696.pdf

Seems like just the kind of resource I'm looking for. At the moment I'm giving the Simple Chess by Michael Stean another shot. Do you know how Grooten's book compares to Stean's?

Sorry, don't know Stean's book.

Silman's Reassess Your Chess is easy to find and really helpful.

Originally posted by imbalances
Silman's Reassess Your Chess is easy to find and really helpful.

I have the book, haven't really gotten anything out of it. Perhaps I'll study it after finishing Stean's book.

Read and played through the chapter on weak squares (or was it weak pawns, chpt 3). As I played through each game I kept coming away with nothing and thinking that maybe the point will hit me after the next game. Well, after playing through the last game, I was still waiting for something to make sense.

Maybe after I read the chapter again in a few months. On to the next one. I get chpt 2 on outposts, now I just have to think about them as I play! 😀

The Stean book is outstanding and worth re-reading from time to time. Have you read Evan's "New Ideas in Chess?" It is an easy read with some great snippets.

I have to mention some other favorite works of mine:
1) Reshevsky "Art of Positional Play" is an absolutely amazing game collection where each game focuses on a specific theme. It's in descriptive, but the notes are very helpful IMHO.
2) John Littlewood's "How to Play the Middlegame in Chess" is the one that helped me the most. He teaches a bunch about endgames too.
3) Marovic's "Secrets of Positional Chess" has a ton of great examples and can be dipped into off and on with profit.
4) Euwe's Judgement & Planning in chess is terrific and has a great section on the queenside attack.

I could name two others that rock, but this is turning into a laundry list. Skip Silman btw.

I don't recall even seeing anything about Evan's book.

I'm just getting into the open file chapter of Stean's book and learned something new. I learned that if a rook can't use the file to invade your opponent's position, then the open file is of little use. It is also a good idea to have your king next to the open file to control the file and prevent the opponent's rook from invading. That's excellent to know and now I feel like I have a much better understanding of open files and how to deal with them and use them.

Thanks for posting the books, this thread will be a nice reference. 😀

Originally posted by Eladar
I don't recall even seeing anything about Evan's book.

I'm just getting into the open file chapter of Stean's book and learned something new. I learned that if a rook can't use the file to invade your opponent's position, then the open file is of little use. It is also a good idea to have your king next to the open file to control the file and prevent t and use them.

Thanks for posting the books, this thread will be a nice reference. 😀

Are you referring to "New Ideas In Chess" by GM Larry Evans? If so, I have a paperback version. I met Larry Evans at a simultaneous exhibiton in my first Chess club in Virginia about 1969 or 1970 when I was just beginning to get interested in chess enough to join a chess club.

I didn't play him for I was too intimidated to try to play a grandmaster, but I bought that book. I did not have a lot of time to devote to learning chess at that time and it was several years later before I got through the book. Of course, the new ideas would be common ideas of today, but I have the old version in descriptive notation and I see that Amazon is selling a new updated version in algebraic notation.

I believe it has good information that beginners should learn. The knowledge I learned there may have helped me in my 3-way tie for first place in the Class C section of the 1982 World Open, where I came away with $4,500 in prize money. I got too busy after that and had to quit playing until my retirement a few years ago, after which I join RHP.

The Instructor

That's really cool. I would be too intimidated to play a GM too. Heck, at the moment I'm too intimidated to play my genius cousin 😀 He finds planets in other solar systems, was in the first group to find one.

Hopefully one day I'll feel that I'm good enough to challenge him.

I finished the chapters on open files and half open files. Nice to know about minority attacks and placing rooks on open and half open files. I remember understanding about putting my rooks on the 7th rank and won a game or two doing it the first time I read it. I don't know why I forgot about this powerful move. Hopefully it will stick and will be something I try to do from here on out.

I like the idea of a minority attack on the queen side, but playing 1.b3 may make this a bit difficult seeing as my bishop will block my rook from supporting the b pawn. 🙁