Chess Books - Strategy Basics

Previously, I posted lists of general books from beginner to expert and puzzle collections for beginners and intermediate players. In this post, I would like to give readers a list of introductory strategy books.

The term "strategy" is very broad and could be taken to mean almost anything. Therefore, let me be specific about what I mean by "strategy": I mean the ability to judge a position and formulate a plan accordingly. I am not including books devoted exclusively to the following topics, even though many chess books that have "strategy" in the title use the term to mean these things:

- Conducting an attack on the enemy king

- Tactical patterns to win material

- Pawn structures

- Opening or endgame strategy

So, for example, Jeff Coakley's Chess Strategy for Kids is not included because it is aimed at beginners; consequently, much of it is focused on basic endgames, checkmates, and tactical patterns. Nor is Shereshevsky's Endgame Strategy, Hellsten's Mastering Opening Strategy, or Mauricio Flores Rios's Chess Structures, even though all of those can arguably be called books on "chess strategy".

Also, this list is aimed at players who already understand tactics and are now moving on to positional chess - that is, the elements of strategy that are not primarily concerned with immediately checkmating one's opponent or winning material.

In addition, I will save game collections for future posts. Some players find it more fun and motivating to learn from the games of their favorite players - Morphy, Alekhine, Botvinnik, Tal, etc. - but in this post, I will stick to books that are organized by topics (material, development, space, strong squares, etc.) and use game fragments or full games from a range of players to illustrate the concepts they are expounding. This means that I will have to skip some great introductory books that are fantastic for this article's level, such as Irving Chernev's Logical Chess Move by Move or Sunil Weeramantry's Best Lessons of a Chess Coach. But I will include those in future articles about easy game collections.

With that aside, let's move on to my list.

A good first book on positional strategy is Yasser Seirawan's Play Winning Chess. Although I've already listed this book in my article on beginner books, and generally, positional strategy isn't the place where beginners start, I do like how this book organizes all the elements of chess strategy into four major principles: Force, Time, Space, and Pawn Structure. It is great to give this framework to players at the very start of their chess education. Even though things like space and pawn structure are concepts that are a bit advanced for an absolute beginner, it is useful for beginners to know that material isn't everything. This book is written in a way that is very friendly even for absolute beginners, and it makes a great starting point.

This series also has a book dedicated exclusively to strategy: Winning Chess Strategies. That one is more advanced than Play Winning Chess (I think the intention is that readers start with Play Winning Chess and then move on to Winning Chess Tactics and some of the other books in the series before studying Winning Chess Strategy). But it is still one of the only books I know on positional strategy that is appropriate for the beginner range. You can safely skip this one if you don't find the next books in this list too difficult, but if you are a lower-rated player and would like to get a taste of what positinal strategy is about but find other books too difficult, Yasser may suit you. These two books are also co-written by Jeremy Silman, who will come up later.

One level up from Seirawan is the following excellent book, Simple Chess by Michael Stean. It is not as comprehensive as Silman or some of the other authors listed below (he only covers a subset of topics, mostly dealing with static features and doesn't cover dynamic features), but I would recommend reading through this one quickly before committing to Silman. This book is a very quick and entertaining read, and it's very economical (available for $10-15 in the US). Everyone who mentions this book is a huge fan, for good reason.

The gold standard for introductory strategy books is Jeremy Silman's Reassess Your Chess. The three titles I listed above are good places to start before committing to this book, but for those who want a first serious and comprehensive coverage of all the elements of positional chess, this is a great place to start. Silman tends to be long-winded and rambling at times, but this book is quite comprehensive and very good at explaining things. This is the Fourth Edition, which is completely reworked from the Third Edition. In some ways, I like the Third Edition better - it is a lot more concise and less rambling, but the Fourth Edition captures all of Silman's charm, and his digressions are entertaining, so I'd stick to the newest edition.

Another great book by Jeremy Silman is The Amateur's Mind. It has a lot of overlap with Reassess in terms of topics discussed, but the style is very different. It goes through games and discusses the thought process of an amateur compared to how a master would think about a position. It's not quite necessary to read both of these books by Silman before moving on, but if you like his style, or if you think that the style of this book will resonate more than Reassess, this book is worth picking up.

The next book on the list is Modern Chess Strategy by Luděk Pachman. Unfortunately, I've only ever seen this book in Descriptive notation, but if that doesn't bother you, this is one of the best books I can recommend on the subject, and I'd say it might even be worth learning Descriptive Notation to read this. Like Silman, he covers all the basic elements of positional chess in a very organized and systematic way, and his examples are great for getting to the heart of the concepts. It's not a hard book if you're 1500 or 1600, but it's just serious enough to push you. If you find Silman too verbose or not serious enough, this book might be the best choice for your first serious book on strategy.

The above book is actually an abridged version of the three-part Complete Chess Strategy by Luděk Pachman. This book is also available in Descriptive, but I've heard there is an Algebraic edition out there somewhere. I think the abridged version is quite fine, but it does leave out some examples, so if you want the more complete treatment, you can look out for this edition.

Another good intro to the elements of positional judgment and planning can actually be found in the second and third chapters of the excellent Think Like A Grandmaster by Alexander Kotov. Although the book is most famous for its first chapter which discusses the tree of analysis and candidate moves, the bulk of the book is actually taken up by the second and third chapters that discuss some of the basic elements of positional strategy: open lines and diagonals, pawn structure, and so on. This book doesn't quite fit nicely into this list, but I couldn't leave it out because I think that after reading Stean, Silman, and/or Pachman, the two chapters mentioned makes a good quick synopsis of everything you have learned.

A controversial title that I can't omit is Aron Nimzowitsch's My System. Some people love it, and some people hate it. I think the problem is that most people encounter this book at the wrong stage of their chess development. Either they read it as a beginner and find it too hard - because not only are they encountering some of these concepts for the first time, but they have to deal with Nimzowitsch's eccentric style at the same time - or they read this book when they are too advanced and find it unsophisticated. I think that if you read it after already learning the basics of positional chess from Silman and/or Pachman, you can enjoy and learn a lot more from it because you won't be struggling with new concepts at the same time as the weird style. I think it's an excellent book, and I think this is a good point in the list to insert it.

Another classic which is very worth working through is Peter Romanovsky's Chess Middlegame Planning. This book is actually half of the two-part series Chess Middlegame Planning and Chess Middlegame Combinations. I believe that Planning is supposed to come before Combinations, despite the order shown in the image below, but in truth, you can read them in any order. These books are real classics. They cover all the classic positions every chess player should know, and the style is excellent. He is very heavy on verbal explanations rather than giving long analyses, which makes these suitable for those who are not very advanced. It's probably somewhat more advanced than Silman.

Romanovsky's two books have also been published as a single volume by Quality Chess, which they decided to title Soviet Middlegame Technique. It is newly translated and very nicely formatted. If you can find this edition, go for it.

Another classic by one of my favorite chess authors is Judgement and Planning in Chess by Max Euwe. Like Pachman, it is only available in Descriptive, but the style is also approachable, and it's also organized systematically and clearly.

Also by Max Euwe, co-written by Hans Kramer is the two-part set The Middlegame. The first book deals with Static Features (material and pawn structure), and the second book deals with Dynamic Features (initiative, king safety, attack and defense, and more). It is very comprehensive, has lots of really great examples, and Euwe's style of explaining is quite clear. The chapters on pawn structure are especially good. This is in some ways a beefed up version of Pachman's Complete Chess Strategy. By no mean is this a mandatory part of the reading list, but I highly recommend these two books.

A more recent book on strategy is Herman Grooten's Chess Strategy for Club Players. I'm somewhat mixed about this book because on the one hand, it is fun to follow Grooten's philosophizing, but often he gets off-point and it's hard to see what he's trying to get at. Perhaps it is just his style. Still, it's a fun book and easier than the next book on this list. So if  you've already read the books above and you're looking for something else that is fun and educational, this is a good choice.

Finally, we come to Johan Hellsten's masterpiece, Mastering Chess Strategy. This book is just packed with example after example, as well as exercises. He hardly give you time to breath. This book is almost five hundred pages, every single one of them of the highest quality. It is not an easy book, and it will take you a while to work through it, but you will learn a lot from this. 

This concludes my list of books on basic strategy. As I mentioned, I haven't included game collections, books on narrower topics like pawn structures, and very advanced books (though some of the books in this list, like Hellsen or Euwe could be considered quite advanced). Some of the instructive game collections I omitted, like Chernev's The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played, Neil McDonald's Chess: The Art of Logical Thinking, Sunil Weeramantry's Best Lessons of a Chess Coach, or John Nunn's Understanding Chess Move by Move are probably good ones to read alongside this list because their difficulty level fits between some of the titles on this list. I will devote future articles listing these kinds of books.