With this book, International Master Herman Grooten presents to amateur players a complete and structured course on:
- how to recognize key characteristics in all types of positions
- how to make use of those characteristics to choose the right plan
His teachings are based on the famous "Elements" of Wilhelm Steinitz, but Grooten has significantly expanded and updated the work of the first World Champion. He supplies many modern examples, tested in his own practice as a coach of talented youngsters.
In Chess Strategy for Club Players you will learn the basic elements of positional understanding: pawn structure, piece placement, lead in development, open files, weaknesses, space advantage and king safety. You will master the art of converting a temporary plus into other, more permanent advantages.
The author also explains what to do when, in a given position, the basic principles seem to point in different directions. Each chapter of this fundamental primer ends with a set of highly instructive exercises.
Herman Grooten is an International Master and a chess coach with over 25 years of experience. Quite a few of his pupils have gone on to become grandmasters, among them Loek van Wely and Jan Werle.
Preface
This book has been written for ambitious club players and 'tournament sharks'. It is an attempt to answer the question many players ask themselves: 'The opening is over, how should I continue the game?'.
In order to answer this question, I have taken Wilhelm Steinitz's Table of Elements as a guideline. Steinitz's strategic principles provide a good foundation to tackle the difficult problem of identifying the positional features in any arbitrary middlegame situation, and to devise the correct strategy on that basis.
In my career as a chess trainer, which spans over 30 years, I have often felt the need to pass on general rules, principles, dogmas and advice. Of course I realize that fundamental principles can be formulated in chess, but at the same time the game is full of exceptions to those rules and principles. On the one hand, this is frustrating during training work, because the moment you teach a rule, you will immediately be confronted with its exception. On the other hand, it is a challenge for me to provide chess students with stepping-stones, in such a way that they keep an eye open for special details. Besides, I resolved to try and teach a sound (and, for them, often new) line of thinking when personally coaching talented youngsters. This line of thought is elaborated in Chapter 3, and in many cases it has proved to be a successful formula for solving difficult strategic problems.
To achieve a better understanding of middlegame situations, it is advisable to practice with them. At the end of each chapter on one of Steinitz's Elements you will find four exercises. As there are 16 el-
ements, you can find 64 exercises which are answered in detail at the end of the book. Almost all exercises are of a strategic nature - which does not exclude tactics!
The difficulty lies mainly in balancing the different ideas against each other. This is not easy, and the reader will need a respectable basic level for this. But the model examples have been chosen in such a way that the theme emerges as clearly as possible. At the same time I have tried to collect a number of masterly examples from chess history.
Should the exercises indeed be too difficult for you, then you can always play through the solutions. In a few other chapters you can train your understanding by doing a quiz. Take a board, play through the game and try to answer the questions. The details follow immediately after you have given the answer. Finally, there are a few special chapters where some interesting reflections and 'training experiments' are deeply investigated.
Many diagram positions in this book have been tested in training sessions of talented youngsters I have had in my charge for a while, either during private training, or in group sessions. At the risk of forgetting someone, I'd like to mention a few names of players who have managed to achieve a title at a young age. The best-known are GM Loek van Wely, GM Jan Werle, IM Wouter Spoelman, IM Robin Swinkels, IM Vincent Rothuis and IM Ali Bitalzadeh.
My thanks also go out to Mark Timmermans, who has checked all the exercises.
Herman Grooten,
Eindhoven, March 2009
Content:
007 Foreword by Jan Timman
008 Preface
009 Chapter 1: Steinitz's Elements
021 Chapter 2: The eye of the grandmaster
034 Chapter 3: Thought process and line of thinking
049 Chapter 4: Material advantage
067 Chapter 5: Weakened king position
081 Chapter 6: Passed pawn
100 Chapter 7: Weak pawns
112 Chapter 8: Training experiment
126 Chapter 9: Strong and weak squares
147 Chapter 10: The pawn islands theory
161 Chapter 11: The pawn centre
180 Chapter 12: The diagonal
206 Chapter 13: Quiz: strong square
211 Chapter 14: The open file
226 Chapter 15: The bishop pair
239 Chapter 16: Control of a rank
253 Chapter 17: A piece out of play
268 Chapter 18: Quiz: open file
272 Chapter 19: Harmony and coordination
287 Chapter 20: Lead in development
30 Chapter 21: Centralization
318 Chapter 22: Space advantage
335 Chapter 23: Quiz: space advantage
339 Chapter 24: Solutions
403 Chapter 25: Epilogue
408 Bibliography
409 About the author
410 Index of Players | 
