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Chess Strategy for Club Players |  | Author: Herman Grooten
Publisher: New In Chess
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $15.00
as of 7/29/2010 17:50 MDT details
You Save: $14.95 (50%)
New (18) Used (10) from $14.76
Seller: pkajstura
Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 232152
Media: Paperback
Pages: 400
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.6 x 1.1
ISBN: 9056912682
Dewey Decimal Number: 794
EAN: 9789056912680
ASIN: 9056912682
Publication Date: July 16, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | ISBN13: 9789056912680 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
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Product Description
A top chess coach explains the fundamentals of chess strategy to amateur players. Herman Grooten, an International Master with over 25 years of experience, has written a systematic primer about the basics of positional understanding, with a massive amount of examples and exercises.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A good book....but not great. April 14, 2010
Wallace H. Hannum (Menlo Park, CA USA)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
First of all, the material in this book is not very well organized.
The author also tends to combine ideas in a way that isn't very lucid.
The chapters tended to mix themes and the author needed to focus better on the lesson at hand.
Chernev, for example, was great at this. Take one concept, give a few basic examples, then more advanced ones.
In the beginning he shows some games played by his students and talks about their brilliant moves.
Excellent play, for sure, but its not very educational.
Why start a book on strategy for club players with such advanced games? Its much more instructive to show the themes in clean, simple forms first and THEN the advanced, complicated version. Patzer first, then Grandmaster.
The concepts the author discusses ARE essential to good positional play, but I didn't find it engaging or in any way superior to other books such as Silman's "Reassess Your Chess" or Seirawan's series.
In particular, I think McDonald's recent book "Chess Secrets: The Giants of Strategy" was MUCH more interesting as well as more instructive. In fact, I would recommend the ancient classic "My System" by Nimzowitsch over this book. Or really any collection of well-annotated games by players such as Capablanca or Smyslov.
That said, there IS good material throughout, it has excellent production quality, and it is certainly not a bad book. It is a nice thick, pretty book :)
But there are better, cheaper books out there.
I wanted to like it more, but it just seems standard to me. Oh well...
Excellent book on Developing Positional Understanding January 21, 2010
Igelfeld (Ca United States)
25 out of 25 found this review helpful
Make no mistake, if you're a club player that wants to have all the basic teachings related to Steinitz in one book, there probably is no better book around that systematically goes through the material. It is ironic that the publisher "New In Chess" published this book because most of the ideas are 100 years old. With that said, you can win a ton of games with these ideas and players over the last 100 have done just that.
The book primarily uses game and game fragments to illustrate the execution of strategic plans and reaction of those plans to the opponent's moves. It is quite obvious that Grooten is very experienced chess coach and I'd gladly take a lesson from him any time. With that said, this book is a bargain at less than 20 dollars for all the valuable information in the book. It really is a one stop shop for a complete Steinitz principles.
With that said, I did give the book only four stars and it was for a reason. There were times when Grooten simply does not ask enough questions to really penetrate the finer strategic points of a position. Translating that into chess terms, he doesn't look for the really challenging moves in certain positions and then provide a clear and coherent positional assessment on why one side is better. In fact, very few authors have the ability to really elucidate why one side is better but instead provide assertions with no proof. This is a shortcoming of this book as well, albeit a minor one. Also, there were times during the book when the author presented the material as if he had been the original discover. Theory of two weaknesses was one such example. I know that he was simply trying to exhibit how HE discovered it, but plenty of material is already devoted to exploiting two weaknesses dating back to at least Nimzowitch. This could have been a problem with the translation from Dutch to English, but I'm not quite sure. Finally, certain subjects are just glossed over with limited discussion. This is forgivable because the book is already 400 pages and I'm sure that the publisher has something to say about a 700 page book for something under 20 dollars.
In summary, this is an excellent book for those who are good at self study. It actually is even decent for those who like ideas and information spoon fed to them much in the vain of Pandolfini. I would highly recommend this book to anyone really interested in understanding the basic principles so they can later on understand the exceptions (which is what Grandmasters do in almost every one of their games because they are tactically skilled and understand that dynamic chess is the part of the Steinitz school that really wasn't integrated very well). So, go and by with the confidence that if you spend time really systematically reading this book, the strategic ideas will become second nature.
 superb for players up to expert level November 14, 2009
A. Gonzalez (puerto rico)
11 out of 20 found this review helpful
this book is the real deal,a clear, lucid, easy to understand exposition of positional play for players up to expert level.if you dont have that rating yet,this book will help you get there.have added over a hundred points to my internet rating since reading it a month ago.a must buy.
OUTSTANDING, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! July 15, 2009
G. Schnap (BROWARD COUNTY, FL)
53 out of 55 found this review helpful
This work not only covers strategy for the club player (as title aptly indicates) but also covers how to formulate a plan based on positional factors with an overall strategy in a position. Proper strategic/positional thinking is also addressed. Given sudden-death time controls, combining planning factors with strategic/positional analysis aids tremendously in time management.
The author, an experienced player (an IM) and trainer (has coached younger players -- several becoming GMs), utilizes Steinitz' Elements (updated with a modern view-point/perspective) to "coach" the reader in an exceptionally friendly, humble conversational manner. It is comprehensive and well worth the price (not one of those "skinny" over-priced books). One gets the impression that this was a "labor of love" for the author and a commitment to present and cover his topic in full.
As a Class Club player (best rating around 1830 -- current 1738) I can heartily urge adult class club players like me to get this book!!
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