Test Your Positional Skills #4

There's no finding checkmate or the win of material here - nope, it's all about testing your positional skills!

 

What to do here?

 

 

White seems to be doing quite well. The knight is posted beautifully in the center while Black's bishop doesn't have much room to roam. White is also in possession of the only open file while Black's rooks are inactive. What would you play?

Comments

  • 3 years ago

    MomirRadovic

    LikeTheLake, right, that's the one - it's Gelfer, not Gelfand, sorry about that.

  • 3 years ago

    LikeTheLake

    Hey Radovic.  I am guessing you mean

    Positional Chess Handbook: 495 Instructive Positions from Grandmaster Games (Dover Chess) Paperbackby Israel Gelfer (Author)

    $10 at amazon, looks like good deal.  Thanks.

  • 3 years ago

    MomirRadovic

    LikeTheLake,

    What comes to mind is Gelfand's "Positional Chess Handbook" with 495 instructive positions from GM games. 

    Contact me here at chess.com and I will see what I can do about it... Cheers

  • 3 years ago

    MomirRadovic

    MichiganEagle, I hail you positional puzzles as we are overwhelmed by tactical ones. They say chess is 99 percent tactics. Wrong, it is 100 percent as everything we do in the present is tactical in nature. However, during games we deal not only with urgent (tactical), but also emergent (strategic) that is coming up and may not be apparent yet. Strategy is superior to tactics but it is harder to grasp and having material like this one is welcome to raise strategic understanding of an ordinary player. Again, kudos for the idea...

    More on strategy and its superiority over tactics on www.iplayoochess.com

  • 3 years ago

    LikeTheLake

    Hi MichiganEagle.  Thanks for the post.  Is there a book with such puzzles for the less than 1800 player?  Chess.

  • 3 years ago

    StevieBlues

    Great puzzle and explanation. Thanks

  • 3 years ago

    FM MichiganEagle

    Again, click the MOVE LIST button to see my explanations.

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