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Tossing Pieces in the AirWith Purpose


Two new releases aim to help you develop your positional sense By JOHN HARTMANN


A


sked to define the difference be - tween the master and the grand - master, the American master Olav


Ulvestad famously quipped:


“A master studies the board, analyzes the position, calculates, deliberates and at last makes the correct move. A grand- master tosses a piece in the air and it lands on the proper square.”1


There is no small kernel of truth in this bon mot. The best players are blessed with a talent for knowing which pieces belong where. The rest of us must over- come our limitations by dint of hard work.


Positional understanding—knowing which pieces belong where and why—is, to my mind, the most difficult of chess skills to develop. There are no shortage of tactics books to sharpen our tactical eye, no lack of opening tomes to help us with the first 15 moves. How can we hone our positional sense? Two new titles aim to assist us with that task. In this review, I’ll argue that neither truly succeeds in that regard, but for very different reasons.


Ukrainian International Master Yaroslav Srokovski is nothing if not bold. He claims in the preface to his new book, titled Chess Training for post-beginners, that “any player who studies this book intensively will improve his or her Elo rating by at least 100 Elo points.” (8) What chutzpah! I’ve heard that some Russian trainers felt that intensive study of Rubinstein’s games would yield a comparable rating boost, but this boast seems just a bit rich.


Srokovski’s book, aimed at players rated 1400-2200(!), orients itself along a broadly Steinitzian understanding (9) of positional play. Good players accumulate long-term


or static advantages until the conditions for attack and victory are in hand. In each of the book’s 12 chapters, Srokovski sums up the chapter’s theme in a few para- graphs, and then uses concrete positions to illustrate the nature and use of a static advantage like the bishop pair or the exploitation of weak squares. 129 positions are analyzed in the book, and there are 54 exercises for the reader to solve.


I must admit some frustration with this book. Most of the examples, on first blush, clearly illustrate the positional theme in question. The explanatory prose is ade- quate if sometimes scant. But I get the sense that Srokovski has engaged in a form of after-the-fact reasoning here. Care- ful analysis shows that more than one alleged positional brilliancy is refuted by precise tactical play. Consider, for example, the position that arises in Kosashvili-Korch- noi from Curacao 2002 (#10 in the book).


AFTER 29. c4


Kosashvili has just played 29. c4. Korch- noi, burdened with the dead bishop on g6, replied 29. ... Qb7, but what if he had played 29. ... bxc4? Srokovski says in a note that play might follow (after 29. ...


Nunn, John. John Nunn’s Chess Course: A Complete Chess Education based on the games of World Champion Lasker. London, England: Gambit, 2014. ISBN: 978-1-906454-82-1. PB. 320 pages. (Available from uscfsales.com, catalog number B0186GB, $24.95)


Srokovski, Yaroslav. Chess Training for post-beginners: A Basic Course in Positional Understanding. Alkmaar, Netherlands: New In Chess, 2014. ISBN: 978-90-5691-472-1. PB. 224 pages. (Available from uscf- sales.com, catalog number B0143NIC, $21.95)


14 November 2014 | Chess Life


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