IMPROVE YOUR POSITIONAL CHESS

Author: Carsten Hansen

192 pages

$25.95

Gambit (2004)

Reviewed by Vanessa West

When my chess instructor, Silman, handed me this book and asked me to review it, my first thought was: “Wow, if he’s asking me, it must be for beginners.” My initial impression, however, was incorrect. This book is fascinating as well as instructive, featuring the games of such players as Petrosian, Fischer, Kasparov, Karpov, Spassky, Kramnik, and many more greats from the past and present. It’s clearly not for beginners, nor was it meant to be.

IMPROVE YOUR POSITIONAL CHESS gives basic information and guidelines for each topic at the start of each chapter but sometimes immediately jumps to exceptions. For instance, the third example in the book, a beautiful Petrosian game, demonstrates King safety by showing Petrosian rush his King from the kingside, through the center, all the way to the queenside. This was a brilliant idea during the game but an inexperienced player trying to imitate this in an inappropriate position will pay dearly. In fact, the author never even mentions that this is an exception. One reason he gives for the King march is that the King will be well-placed “in the event of Black succeeding in exchanging down to an endgame …” BUT WE’RE STILL IN THE MIDDLEGAME! He doesn’t clearly explain why it’s safe in this particular case.

Another example of this is the first position on piece coordination and placement, where the book explains all the reasons why White’s position should be better and then says Black’s position is better anyway. Again, it is an excellent game, but it doesn’t happen every day. The author starts at the basics for the principles of imbalances but the examples do not always correspond.

Despite the fact that the author threw in exceptions to the beginning of the book like bolts of lightening, many of the guidelines for each topic are vital to any good player and as I said before, overall, this book is instructive. It talks about topics like imbalances, the initiative, minor piece battles, sacrifices, pawn structure, and attacking. It gives a lot of useful general information and explains the basic imbalances in much detail. Back to King safety, in the beginning of the chapter, six questions were given telling a player what to look for to decide if her/his King is safe or not. Other books usually just expect these things to come to mind.

When the book talks about pawn structure, it presents practical principles like: attack where your pawns point and the fewer pawn islands the better. It also gives examples of a minority attack, how to deal with isolated pawns, how to use hanging pawns, etc. All of these are essential to a potent player, yet someone trying to get better without a coach may not necessarily be familiar with them. This book can fill in all the blank spaces of your positional play. It also gives you the opportunity to test your positional chess with exercises at the end of each chapter and thirty general exercises at the end of the book.

I think IMPROVE YOUR POSITIONAL CHESS is best for about 1600 to Expert level players who already know the basic imbalances and want to further their familiarity with them, see them applied to games by strong players, or simply refresh their understanding. The book’s examples are definitely interesting and I believe it can help any player, in the range mentioned above, improve their game or at least renew their style.

I leave you with these words that have absolutely nothing to do with the book: “Checkers is for tramps.” – Paul Morphy