Chess Strategy for Club Players (3rd ed.)

This new 3rd edition has, besides various corrections and improvements, a new introduction and a brand-new chapter called ‘Total Control’. In this 35-page chapter Grooten adds the final instructive brick to his formidable, yet very accessible, building: inspired by Tigran Petrosian’s playing style he explains amateurs how to exploit small advantages. With a new set of exercises.

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Every club player knows the problem: the opening has ended, and now what?

First find the right plan, then the good moves will follow!

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
-- king safety
-- exploiting small 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.