positional chess

Ive heard about positional chess and how its important to improve my game. But what is it? My impression is that it is when you improve the positions of your pieces and slowly grind down your opponent over the course of the game as opposed to doing it all at once with a tactical shot. Ive been told tactitcs spawn from good positions so my question is, Is the above what positional chess is and how can i practice is? are there positional problems like there are tactics problems, if so where can i find them? thanks in advance and all help is appreciated. :)

So your asking, what is positional chess, good question, Can I define it in a few words, Nope. Tactical chess is usually a sequence of moves that lead to material gain, attack against a king or a strong positional advantage. Pawn Structure I would include as one of the broad subjects as positional chess, the other is piece play. Black's c8 bishop is permantly trapped, white's g3 knight has no advanced points, and so on. I could describe it in detail, but I'll see if anyone else wants to.

I highly recommend a book by Samuel Reshevsky "The Art of Positional Play". It is a fine collection of games that nicely covers all aspects of so called "positional play".

Thank you for all the answers and i will definetly look into that book patzermike, but is playing games the only way to improve my positional chess or could i also do special puzzles, study pawn structure etc? if so how would i go about doing this?

I say studying chess is best, playing chess without chess study, can improve your recognition for how players, play, but can be limited to learning important ideas.

I would say that beginners mostly need to play until they have absorbed some basic patterns. Once one has gotten over frequently overlooking simple tactics and mates in one, it is time to crack open a book and learn positional ideas.

The difficulty of chess is that one needs to learn generalities of positional play to get started. But to get good one must learn to think outside the box. It is fine and well to say bishops are better than knights in open positions. That is a good generality. But maybe the particular position I am playing is a bit different. One must learn the principles of strategy, but also be alert to exceptional cases where a general principles would lead you astray. Easier said than done!

I found Reshevsky to be a good explainer. As to the accuracy of his annotations, well, at my humble level I don't need accurate analysis that would satisfy a GM. I just need basic stuff pointed out.

HueyWilliams wrote:

I would stay away from anything written by Reshevsky.   Great player but terrible annotator.

shockinn wrote: hayabusahayate16 wrote: shockinn wrote: That 'slowly grind down your opponent' thingy is the outcome of a successful positional game but its not the correct definition of positional chess. The definition of positional chess according to me would be : the way of playing which makes sure every single of your pieces on the board stay as far away from the danger as possible (without trying to attempt even a single intentional attack on a particular piece of your opponent no matter how much weak position it is in). That's a ridiculous definition. positional chess isnt a way of playing it is an understanding of the position which can be shown through sound strategy and tactics. all strong players are positional players and all who aren't (like me) are merely wood pushers, or click and draggers when playing online. Its not my fault that you are an idiot. And a hilarious one at that. _________________________________________________ Not as hilarious as you are.

Chessmicky, I liked your explanation. That made sense to me! What would be the best way to really get an understanding of that aspect of chess? And how should you develop that? I'm probably not ready for that yet. I would like to try though. Any YouTube videos you could recommend.

Get a book called Weapons Of Chess it's an easy read and has lots of good tips on positional chess.

Turned me into a "C" player on this site. 

Ha ha.