Excelling at Positional Chess (Everyman Chess)

I assumed previously that strategy is all tedious and my little 1600 brain would never be able to get "it". But Silman's articles warmed me up to the subject by showing connections between strategy and tactics and I started looking for a good book. I had to reject most candidates, Dvoretsky went over my head, most of the others did not reach the middle level to my mind. But here is a different solid approach combining elements of positional theory with some practical and realistic positions on the board. I don't know if I understand Aagaard fully yet, but it is certainly fun trying and applying the ideas to my own games. Even during blitz, which happens to be my weakest spot, I found myself playing more solid moves, the kind that doesn't lose right away as a I tend to do under the pressure of time. If you want in on the fun, this is probably one of the best guides on strategy for mid levels you are going to find, well, anywhere!

I've been conditioned by Hollywood to expect a let down from anything labelled part II. This book though fully lives up to the high standard set by Aagaard's award winning first book "Excelling at chess". It will change the way you look at a chess position.

I almost feel bad about giving this book only four stars because of how influential it was for my chess development. Aagaard gives an excellent framework for understanding positional chess in this book, going into more detail on how to play positional chess according to what he would later categorize under the three questions (weaknesses, worst placed piece, and opponent's idea). This is an easy book to go through (only 176 pages), though the bulk of the book is in the 108 positional puzzles at the back. So why not five stars? First of all, there are only about 60 pages of actual instruction (not counting the puzzles). That's fine, and the annotations to the positional puzzles are also excellent (and include the full game), but this is a short book of under 200 pages and is not a complete framework. I really appreciated this book despite the limited about of input because I already went through some of Aagaard's other content which gave context to it, but not everyone will have done this. Also, when I went through this book, I was under the impression that Aagaard didn't understand positional chess anywhere near as well as he did as when he became a GM (Aagaard was only an IM at the time of writing this book). I don't mean this as an insult; I believe Aagaard did a great job explaining many of the concepts and ideas in this book. It's just that Aagaard raised the bar so high that you can really notice the difference with his older books, even if he writes significantly better than average. Another reason why I gave this book four stars is that at times I found myself somewhat bored (although this was still an exception) - this was the reason why I switched books partway through the puzzles section and only finished this book recently. This may be a personal flaw rather than a flaw of Aagaard, but I generally love reading chess books and never had this experience with Aagaard's 'Quality Chess' books. I highly recommend this book for players in the expert to FM range who would like to improve their positional chess, although not as a standalone. Students who study this book should also study Aagaard's 'Positional Play', 'Strategic Play', and Dvoretsky's 'Maneuvering: The Art of Piece Play'.

This book looks like a bad sequel of a good book by Aagaard called Excelling at Chess. I go back to that book every now and then to review some points and to better understand conceptually chess. The idea of excelling at positional chess is interesting but wasn't that covered alreay in the first book? Other than the positional exercises (that you can craft for yourself by examining a middlegame position from a great game) I didn't find anything novel or worth reading in this book... Frankly, Aagaard he is becoming a Schiller by doing this type of book factory like production. I was frankly saddened by his book on the Grunfeld and this book about excelling at positional chess... Poor quality books from a guy that created a good name for himself by publishing a very good book of chess: Excelling at Chess. IM Aagaard just entered the dog-house of authors I don't want to read ever again that include: GM Neil McDonald (His book on the French Winawer was hideous), IM John Watson (The third edition of Play the French was terrible), Schiller (Ugh!), and GM Larry Evans. Very poor book! Don't buy it!

About one-third of the book is positional instruction by the author. I enjoyed this portion. It includes some good insights into the game. The heart of this book is 108 positional exercises. I like these types of books. I have found that chess puzzles, whether tactical or positional, are the most effective way to improve my playing strength. There are unfortunately not many chess books with positional puzzles (as opposed to tactical). Among the ones I know of, this book is certainly the most advanced. I believe the puzzles are geared toward players with a playing strength of 2100 USCF/FIDE and over. For example, some of the problems are from Grandmaster games in which the GM failed to find the solution! My major complaint with this book is that the problems are not organized by difficulty. So some of them will be fairly simple, while others may stump Grandmasters. This can make training with the book difficult, because I don't know how long to devote to a particular exercise. I don't want to waste 30 minutes on a single puzzle if it's one of the GM stumpers. If you are looking to improve your positional play in chess, I would recommend selecting a book based on your playing strength: 1400-1600: "It's Your Move", by Chris Ward 1500-1900: "The Reassess Your Chess Workbook", by Jeremy Silman 1700-2100: "Can You be a Positional Chess Genius", by Angus Dunnington (this one is my personal favorite!) 1900-2300: "Test Your Positional Play", by Robert Bellin and Pietro Ponzetto 2100-2700: "Excelling at Positional Chess", by Jacob Aagaard (the book reviewed here) So, for advanced tournament chess players looking to improve their positional playing strength, I recommend this book.

This book is grea, but the games insert this games, has a very positional approach. i like positional chess, but for player who love tactics, then will not enjoy the book. For begines or any player around 1800, will enjoy this book. there are nice games. Intermediate layer, could help only like prositional chess.