Techniques of Positional Play Paperback – October 16, 2013

It's still early November. Yet I'll be surprised if a better chess book is released in 2013 for the advance club player than Techniques of Positional Play by Valeri Bronznik and Anatoli Terekhin.This is not a book for novices. Nor is it an introduction to the principles of positional chess. This is instead an excellent primer on the development of positional chess technique.The very first technique is an excellent example: how to use a duo of wing pawns to paralyze the enemy knight. Ten examples follow. The next technique explores other ways of dominating knights with another eight examples.This book is an English translation and adaptation of a Russian classic from FM Anatoli Terekhin. IM Bronznik has done a very effective job of organizing the book. The forty-five techniques are presented in ten chapters:1.Restricting the enemy pieces2.Creating breathing space for your pieces!3.The clash between pawn formations4.The rook pawn - an underrated fighter5.Techniques in the fight for an open file6.Some aspects of piece exchanges7.Working with the king8.Developing and activating the pieces9.Along the diagonals10.Other methodsThere's also a small collection of practical exercises.There is a brief introduction to each technique. Most are priyomes, so many also include an introductory diagram. A priyome, you ask? It's a Russian word for essential positional patterns.For club players to improve, middlegame and endgame understanding is essential. If you work through the examples in this book with a chessboard in front of you, your chess technique is sure to be enhanced.Strongly recommended for all advanced club and tournament players!

New in Chess published an excellent book called Chess training for post begginers, which is an excellent book for those looking to start studying chess from a positional point of view. What I found lacking in that book was the few excercises that came with it after each topic. Well since it was overall a great book I decided to order this book. What I noticed is that this books covers topics in the Chess Training book but builds on them as well as cover some other topics. So its like a level two of the Chess Training for post begginers. Overall this is a great book. You will cover positional ideas in chess that come into play many times but often miss by players who only think tactically. What I mean is lots of time people can calculate long force lines and find a good move, but when forced lines dont exist they feel stuck. More advance players already know that if there are no readily available tactics, to look for positional moves, like restricting an enemy piece on one side of the board and then attacking on the otther wing. .this book will cover ideas like that as well as other positional ideas like when to exchange a piece when not to, who to take advantage of colors (eg when the position dictactes a weakness on an opponents color) and many more topics. .this is a great book for move advance players looking to get into positional understanding of chess. If this is your first time diving into positional chess you may want to start with Chess training for Post beginners or My system before jumping into this book, as either of those two books will give you a foundation and this book will build on it. Again i see this book as a part two of the other book written by New in Chess. So if you liked the other book you will like this one too, as it builds on the that books and adds a few more topics.

This is a very impressive book. It is definitely in the top 20% of chess books I have ever read. Even if you are a more tactical player as opposed to a more positional player, this book will still serve you very well.All 45 positional techniques that are analysed & explained in this book are relevant & if you have played a lot of chess over the years, I am sure that you would of performed some/most of them without realising it & you also would have noticed that you could have used some of these techniques that you did not use because they never had occurred to you either through your own imagination or lack of chess knowledge. Another bonus is that if you ever come across any of these terms in the future when viewing a chess lecture, for example, you will understand what the lecturer or instructor is talking about. There is just the right amount of examples for each technique with around two diagrams per example. There are little variations compared to other books, so it won't bog you down. It refers to previous techniques learnt & future ones in the book when relevant, which I believe helps cement one's learning. The chapters are organised in a logical manner. I can not give enough credit to this book.If you have been under the impression that there is no need to learn games from the golden era of chess (1851-1930) because you believe they are outdated, think again. You will observe by reading this book that so many of these ideas were thought up back in those years. The truth is that so many chess ideas came from men such as Steinitz, Lasker, Rubinstein, Capablanca, Nimzowitsch & Alekhine. Of course, since their time, players such as Botvinnik & Smyslov, amongst others also have contributed. What is it about Botvinnik anyway, his games keep popping up a lot more than any other player's in chess books that I read?Please do not hesitate, get yourself a copy of this book. Hands down the best chess book published this year! Thank you Valeri bronznik & co-author for your contribution for us mere mortals trying to understand the complexities of the middlegame, afterall, it is a black & white jungle out there!