Just curious, how did you improve your strategic and positional playing (or were you unable to improve it), and whatever you did, did you notice a significant improvement in your rating? (By how much?)

Did chess books help? Looking over master games constantly? Memorizing openings? Obviously, optimally, you should do them all, but is there an easier way?

I've found this thread to be an invaluable source of information:

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/if-you-know

Yes, that is helpful, but my thread is different, that asks what is strategic positioning, I'm asking how you train for it, or improve it. It's hard to define strategy in a forum post.

If you want to go back to basics Winning chess strategies is great, but as much as I loved the book I think it might be too basic.  I have a warm place in my heart for Teach yourself better chess, which I think made me a far more creative player.  Otherwise Reassess your chess and Modern chess strategy are both widely recommended, although I haven't gotten around to reading them (I found the annotated reassess games too diffucult for me last time I tried to read it.)

Other solid ideas are playing solitare chess and seeing what the masters play, I actually learned almost all of the thematic moves in the pirc defense (c6 was an exception, I had to have that one explained to me) just from going over master games.  Opening books that go over thematic moves/plans can also help quite a bit if you are having a bit of trouble in a specific opening.  And of course - there is always the best study tool of all - POST MORTOM ANALYSIS!

Apart from the usual books and so on, KingsCrusher's YouTube videos have helped my understanding of positional play.

I think I got all my strategic knowlege from books and chess dvds/movies. Pachmans Modern Chess Strategy + Simple Chess by Stean are good aswell as Silmans strategy books. Also with some practice by playing more positional openings.

Interesting stuff, I'll definitely check it out. I have purchased 2 books recently, still on their way, Zurich International Chess Tournament, 1953 and Neil McDonald's Concise Chess Middlegames. Hopefully they will help.

ever since I learned Strategic Positioning, my rating went up 500 points.

I think you first have to study pawn structurs like crazy..

I recently came back to chess after being away from it for several years.  It has been a fun but difficult process of prying open some very rusty brain cells.  I am certainly no great player, but when I was playing before I read several of Jeremy Silman's books that were very helpful for expanding my understanding of the game.  I am working on his endgame book right now, and it is excellent.  It starts with basic forced mates and goes all the way through some fairly complex (he claims master level) engame situations.  I think his "How To Reassess Your Chess" is great for the basics of positional play.  I plan to reread that one soon as well, as I find I am in need of a review. 

First I had an intro to the "imbalances" as Silman calls it in his books How to Reasess your chess, and the Amateur's mind, how amateurs interpret them. Then, studying openings and thematic master games with them, annotating them quite heavily myself, was extremely helpful. I think it was more so the pawn structures (and how the pieces develop around it) in the openings than the openings themselves that helped, but seeing how the pawn structure (or lack of it even!) determines to a big extent what your plan is.

It improved my rating a lot, but only when I was able to back it up with tactics. I found if I wasn't blundering, then I would usually strategically crush my opponents.

Elubas, that's sort of my problem. I can develop fine, and I don't usually blunder pieces away, but when each side has developed and then begins the attack-plan phase, I try to make a plan to checkmate and or attack unprotected pieces, but this is something I do naturally, not based on some strategy.

Occasionally if I win, it's because the opponent blundered, made a mistake, or launched an attack that wasn't great---or that I launched an attack, the other player couldn't defend. But it wasn't a plan based on pawn structures, or "oh so he has a weakness here", it was simply, "what kind of checkmate can I do? Queen + bishop or Rook+ queen? Alright, let's give it a shot, let me put pieces in place" --- it's sort of like driving with blurry vision, just trying to see what works.

That's a problem. You shouldn't be looking for an attack all the time. Sometimes there really is no attack and you'll just end up shooting yourself in the foot. 1.b3 has been really useful for me in that my opponents try to blow me off of the board which is just unrealistic. I just sit back and watch my opponent leave holes all over the place and then I proceed to stick my knights in the center. Uh oh he just played ...h5 lol.

You should really just try to control the center and improve the position of your pieces while worsening your opponent's. Attacking tends to be a good way to do that but not always. It's a real misconception that you have to attack your opponent to beat him but that's really far from the truth.

Actually I think it's 100% correct.  Attacking is required to win... you just have to play positionally until you have a big enough advantage to launch a successful attack.  A premature attack [which usually fails] almost always loses.

I went from 800 to 1600... I practiced with a few experts online, asked for advice, went over master games with a chess bot, and played against one for 3 hours until I got the moves right... but that's just me, and it worked great. 

With that endorsement, maybe I will now read this book rather than stare at it and say "Who the hell is Znosko-Borovsky?  Boy does he stick out like a sore thumb among my early 20th century books by Capablanca, Lasker, and Tarrasch."

I eagerly await for more such secrets of strategic positioning, positional strategy, and stratositional posategy to develop my [super grand]master plan...

very gradual for me. I think most of it was studying openings for me...after I got basics down...and its basically one type of position at a time. lots of times I may have some position on the board and think something like, this is similar to a tarrasch french lien in this respect and this respect, but it also has some additional KGD themes going on over here, and I sortof put the knowledge I have of the two positions together and get an idea of whats really going on. So opening study is fundamental. being able to dissect the position into parts first, and put them together...

Also I continue to notice small nuances with experience, like say, gaining the 2 bishops tends to slightly mroe than compensate for the structural weaknesses of doubled isolated pawns that are not on a half open file.

Also studying endgames can help a lot, liek if I am in some manovuering stuggle on some part of the board with a rook versus a knight and some pawns, my knowledge of how to play some exchange up endgame and techniques in that can help me there...even crazy thing like how to play pawnless endgames with 2 knights verus a queen can help guide me in psoitions where im fighting some queen in an open board with 2 knights and my own queen is occupied elsewhere...

So basically I tihnk i had a general epiphany early on about the improtance of development, and about some pawn structure concepts, and after that its very gradual and comes from various sources.

It just sort of gradually improved over time.  Silman's book were the first I bought so was introduced to imbalances and things very early.  Then a few hundred illustrative master games and some pawn structure learning later it's started to come together and make more sense.

Probably playing a lot and illustrative games helped the most.

I really don't know how much that increased my strength though, it's so gradual and other things are being learned at the same time.