Mastering Chess Strategy Kindle Edition

Good

Author Johan Hellsten (Play the Sicilian Kan) and editor John Emms created a great book on Chess Strategy.What make this book stand out:1.The book is well structured.The introduction has definitions such as: dynamics, plan, initiatite, typical position so author and readers will be on the same page.2.From the start Hellsten make it clear about the role of tactics in your game.A Great Strategical idea will fail if you do not recognize or stop your opponents threats first.3.A good balance between complete games and fragments.4.Many ideas may be be familiar to the reader, but the inclusion of training position will make the difference. The training positions help to add the strategical concepts to your chess intuition(during play).5.The games cover a wide range from the 50's up to 2009.The games and position are annotated with a balaced amount of word and variations, so you keep your attention on what is important and not on minor details.6.Sometimes the opening that originated a position is mentioned. For example Hellsten - Soppe Pinamar 2004 pag 176. Is this relevant, I think it is, in this particular game Hellsten give us the "HOW" to mobilize a kingside majority against strong Argentinian player (which by the way excel in this type of structures, just check your database).7.About the book: It is sturdy, the layout is easy on your eyes and you have 3-4 blank pages at the end to write notes or write your own opening index.Who will benefit from this book? that is a tough one...I think this book must be the second strategy book for a club player.A club player must work on a good primer on strategy such as Chess strategy for the club player (by Alburt and Palatnik) or Euwe's books on the middlegame. These books will provide the background to tackle this book.Advance players will find a lot of positions to study and solve.Finally, Jhon Emms is doing a great work as Editor. This book remind me of the quality of Starting out the Scandinavian by Jovanka Houska (also edited by Emms)In my opinion this is a high quality book (my chess skill level is 1900 USCF).Disclaimer: I am not a professional reviewer, just a chess fan.UPDATE!November 24 2010A review by Steven B. Dowd at ChessCafe [...] is available now.This reviewer has problems with his copy. According to him the book is falling apart...My copy is doing fine, the binding still intact.Mr. Dowd provided a more detailed review of this book than me. Please check it out of you have a chance.Thank you,

I have gone through 2/3 of this excellent book, both the examples and the exercises. The strength of this book lies in the sheer weight of its examples and puzzles which illustrate each theme and sub-theme of chess strategy (there are at least 30 sub-themes, each with numerous examples and puzzles to solve ). As has been noted, it is not suitable for a first book on chess strategy, and I'd say it is only for 1600 USCF or stronger (I am 1838 as of 15 years ago and am probably currently around 1900-2000).If you're the kind of chess player who can be shown one or two striking and exhaustively analyzed examples of, say, the power of two bishops, or the concept of exchanging pieces to reduce opponent activity, and then you immediately incorporate these concepts in your games, you don't need this book.For the rest of us, learning is a slower, more incremental process, and it takes a lot of exposure to begin to develop a positional "feel". I think that's what MCS does best, it develops your positional "feel," although it takes a lot of work on the reader's part. But who expects this to be easy ? MCS is difficult yet not mind-numbing, and that's an important distinction.I find the depth of analysis to be just right on balance, considering the goal is learning by repetition. If the analyses were exhaustive, the book would be 2000 pages long. That said, the analysis of positions and problems are usually rigorous enough to make the point.Most of the game excerpts are biased toward modern chess (1950s to present), but I did just finish a puzzle from Teichmann/Bernstein, 1909.Again, the book is not heavy on brain-numbing tactics and variations (there are other books for that), but neither is it lightweight or superficial. It is geared squarely toward improving, relatively advanced class players, who need to be exposed to a lot of material in order to learn.

good book

To get the most of this book you really need to take your time and work through every example game as well as the corresponding problem sets. This book does a great job demonstrating a wide range of midgame strategic concepts as well as piece-specific strategies and ideas. This entire series by GM Hellsten is excellent at illustrating challenging concepts in a way that is easy to digest. It definitely requires effort on the part of the reader to get the most of the material.

For the first time in a while, I think I'm reading a chess book that will improve my skills. The book is showing me ideas and concepts I hadn't been aware of before. I wish the diagrams were a big bigger in the Kindle edition -- they are readable on my iPad but its a struggle for me (older eyes) on my iPhone 7 Plus.

Echoing the other reviews - this book is an amazing resource for improving your middlegame concepts. Really high quality examples with just the right amount of analysis, and excellent scope. Highly recommend for intermediate chess players looking to strengthen their game.

Excellent middlegame book. Just enough variations to explain the concept. Good text explanations. Nice balance. Hundreds of examples. I am a chess rated Expert. I also bought his endgame book in the set. That is excellent also.

Tudo certo com o vendedor e o livro.

tres bon livre pour comprendre la strategie

Book delivered in perfect condition.But it's not easy, you have to spend lot of time going through the positions finding tactics and other strategy.

This book is a bit over hyped in the on-line reviews. I've read the first two chapters and I find there is one major flaw with it. The author doesn't provide complete game scores and almost all of the examples begin in the middlegame. I consider it much more effective when studying a game to see the complete game score from move one. This helps you to better understand the position and the flow of the game. In the book you are presented with a position where one side has an advantage and is about to undertake a strategic maneuver leading to an attack or to an improved position and then you follow the moves. However, there is no explanation as to how that side obtained the advantage shown and those moves are not presented. Before trying to learn how to maneuver with a slight advantage I would prefer to first be shown how to obtain that slight advantage.

Shipping timing was on point and no damage to book. Highly recommended Book But study Chess notation before you dive in!