hi & hello! anyone, please make any recommendation on how to learn positional/strategic chess, books, cd, dvd or whatever, ur kindest response very much appreciated...thanksssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

in advance...

Silman's various books (How to Reassess Your Chess, The Amateur's Mind and the Reassess Your Chess Workbook) are generally well thought of and a reasonably easy read. I think that Nimzowitsch's My System is actually better but maybe not to everyone's taste. If you are really brave you could Dvoretsky's books.

We may study the games of the following:

Nimzowitch

Capablanca

Petrosian

Karpov 

 

 

Test your Positional Play [Bellin / Ponzetto]...it's the best book on the subject I've seen. I recommend Silman's books for players < 1600, but the TPP mentioned above is just great...wish there were more of them!

If you buy a copy cheap at amazon...let me know what you think ok?

The good old classic "My System" by Aaron Nimzowitsch has rocked its age and is considered the best chessbook ever written by many top grandmasters. The obvious downside to it is that it dates from 1925 and is therefore obsolete in some parts, although it is amazing how many of Nimzowitsch's insights are actually still valid. Additionally I would recommend John Watson's prize-winning "Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy", as the subtitle suggests, it deals with "Advances since Nimzowitsch". What I like even more about it is that the author's style is far more enjoyable than what you find in most chess books, and he offers a lot of explanation to backup his opinions.

Although I am absolutely sure that you can learn an awful lot from this book, Watson himself claims it is not an outright teaching book like those dealing with each strategem in its turn, like weak squares, pawn structures, open lines and so forth.

If you want one of those, you can probably resort to one of the  books mentioned in some earlier post or try the acclaimed book "Recipes from a Grandmaster Kitchen" by Valeri Beim. I don't know it because I learnt that kind of stuff from other (German) books, but I do know Beim's books "How to Play Dynamic Chess" and "How to Calculate Chess Tactics", both of which are highly recommendable, by the way.

Hope this helps in any way,

Cheers! 

At the beginning level there's "Winning Chess Strategy" and "The Amateur Mind". At the intermediate level there's "My System" and "How to Reassess Your Chess". Watson's "Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy" is also well-regarded... I may attempt that next year, after I'm done studying Nimzowitsch's "My System".

Playing through master games is a great way to acquire strategic knowledge, but I figure it's better to learn the building blocks from a book first, the same way you study basic vocabulary before you read A Tale of Two Cities.