Best Chess Book for Positional Play

I'm looking for a chess book, that would help out someone like me, in the 1400-1600 range, in terms of strategy, planning, and positional play.

I do tons of tactics problems daily (rated about 1740 on chesstempo, and 1650 in TT), and so I do know a lot of patterns and basics of tactics.

I just have trouble setting up for an attack once I have developed my pieces. I advance pawns and pieces towards the enemy, or go after any unprotection pieces or simply put my pieces on diagonals/files that give it more ability.

However, sometimes my position becomes so strained that due to limited squares to move my peices I am more likely to make a blunder or mistake.

I also play a ton of blitz games, 5-min, 10-min, 1-min. I do play some online chess, but very few games compared to blitz/bullet.

What do you think is the most appropriate chess book for me?

I was thinking of one of Silman's books or Yasser's books like this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Winning-Chess-Strategies-revised-Everyman/dp/1857443853/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271477627&sr=8-7

What do you think? Thank you for any help.

Seirawan doesn't really cover pawn breaks or freeing/undermining moves at all, so you might need another book to supplement that.  A few books that touch on this important topic are Hans Kmoch's Pawn Power in Chess, Kotov's chapters in The Art of the Middlegame, Andrew Soltis' Pawn Structure Chess and Mark Dvoretsky's Strategic Play.  Writers like Nimzowitsch, Marovic and Watson discuss pawn breaks in the context of pawn chains, but you may need a bit more than that if you are going to understand structures like the Maroczy Bind or hedgehog formations.

Andrew Latham has some notes on pawn structures on a web page here.  Aleksey Bartashnikov also has a CD set from Chessbase called Basic Principles of Chess Strategy which touches on some of these issues.

Wow that's a lot of books and a lot of notes to take in.

The book called pawn power, is apparently very heavy reading and they say it's aimed for 1800+ players. The Art of Middle Game is written well in the past, they say the notation is hard to understand and it might be suited for higher level players. Are you sure I should delve into these already?

The reviews for the Pawn Structure Chess, really made me comfortable with it. Perhaps I will purchase this one. http://www.amazon.com/Pawn-Structure-Chess-Andrew-Soltis/dp/0812925297

The Strategic play one looks interesting too, but I am a bit discouraged by almost no reviews.

Anyway, this will be one of my first chess books, so please understand my caution in approaching one that may really help my middle-game.

I guess some of those are fairly high level works.  Soltis is fairly good at explaining his ideas in a way that everyone can understand, and the Bartashnikov CD is also written for players who are starting out.  Seirawan does write in a clear style, but I guess what I am trying to say is that a lot of primers leave out some key concepts.  On the subject of primers, Michael Stean and John Emms have both written books called Simple Chess, and there are books like Irving Chernev's Logical Chess Move by Move or John Nunn's Understanding Chess Move by Move which you may find helpful.

I heard of the Irving book, might check it out.I'm looking for a book that can explain principles and ideas on what I should do during a game and what structures/goals I should create to have better position in games.

A good starting book for strategy is Michael Stean's Simple Chess.

Grooten's Chess Strategy for Club Players has been good so far.

Don't let descriptive notation scare you off from a book. It is well worth the effort to learn it, and it isn't that hard.

Ideally, a book that deals with strategy should try to look at positions as a whole and how developments in one area of the board affect what's going on in other areas.  For instance, sometimes when you shift all your pieces to the queenside to put pressure on some pawn weakness there, you end up getting mated on the kingside because you didn't leave enough pieces to defend your king.  It's hard to think of a beginner's book that looks at strategy in this way, but the move by move books at least deal with how things play out in actual games instead of just giving a laundry list of concepts that may or may not be important in any given position.  Alexander Kotov is one writer who tries to explain these linkages, and that's why I mentioned him.  It would be nice if there was an easy book that covered areas like this where beginning players have trouble, but it's hard to think of one offhand.

Buy Bronstein's book on the 1953 Candidates' Tournament - Zürich.

Play through all the games, follow his commentary and variations. You'll be extremely well briefed on positional chess after those 120+ games. And you will also have a lot of fun - many positional chess books are as fun as being at the dentist, and having all your teeth drilled out. Bronstein's is amazingly engaging.

If you have a good database, you'll already have all the games, if not you'll find them on the net, as a pgn. Then just follow the game and the variations Bronstein discusses on your computer, while reading his notes from the book. Your rating will be considerably higher when you're through, if you're in the 1600s now.

http://www.amazon.com/Zurich-International-Chess-Tournament-1953/dp/0486238008

An old book that I like is Dr. Max Euwe's "Judgment and Planning in Chess".

Lev Alburt has a Strategy book in his Comprehensive Chess Course Series.

Pachman's Strategy Book gets good reviews.  

Capablanca's book, too. 

There are a bunch of modules here on Chess Mentor including the 300 lessons in Silman's Roots of Positional Understanding and he has some Strategy 101 lessons or something sounding similar (well beyond me but maybe good for your level)

A few good positional play puzzle books were suggested in a thread I recently started...  Positional play PUZZLE books/software

yer aff yer heed if yer gonae pay 42 quid for that pawn structure book on amazon! and thats USED!!! who pays $177 dollars for a book??????? NEW! 

I can second Bronstein's Zurich 1953 book and Max Euwe's Judgement and Planning in Chess although neither are for beginners exactly.  Bronstein has a very good explanation of weaknesses on light or dark squares, and Euwe has some good material on weakening your opponent's king's field.

I'd really appreciate a book that can easily explain the ways to create the conditions for an attack on kingside or queenside, pawn structures, and one that uses algebraic notation and decent examples when describing principles without overcomplicating the language.

I can do tactics when they are presented to me, but most games, I feel that a tactic simply doesn't arise unless I create the situation for it. There's my problem, I don't know how to move pieces to form a general attack, I don't know how to push pawns properly, I simply push them naturally.

I see that both players pieces are developed and kings O-O'ed, and everythings protected, then I simply start pushing pawns on queenside or center and hope they will make the opponent's position worse. But a GM/book might tell me that well "since you're both O-O, maybe you should only push queenside, but keep bishop+knight on kingside etc." Some sort of strategy. What my goal should be, that will enable the opponent to be more vulnerable to tactics, attacks, and blunders.

You all have suggested a number of complex books, but will they all accomplish job and explain the concepts to a intermediate like myself without being confusing?

I approach with a bit of caution because I've seen how GMs talk in videos, and they don't seem to explain anything, they simply say "oh of course this move is stronger" or "ah so he is trying to attack my knight, let me push center now." But they never explain the reasoning behind it.

Kotov in Art of the Middlegame talks about where you should launch your attack depending on which side you and your opponent have castled.  A basic rule of thumb is that if you have castled on opposite sides, you can try to push the pawns on the side where your opponent has castled in order to expose their king.  If you have both castled on the same side, and the centre has interlocking pawn chains, you still may be able to push the pawns in front of your king, but if the centre is open, pushing pawns is likely to create holes where your opponent can invade.

The basic idea behind pawn breaks is that if your bishops or rooks are hemmed in by your own pawns or your opponent's pawns, you may have available certain pawn moves that will help to open up lines for your pieces to move, for example, ...b5 or ...d5 in the Maroczy Bind structure.  You prepare these advances by making sure your pieces are supporting your pawns, and that if the position opens up your king will be safe, and your rooks will be ready to take advantage of the newly open files.  Your opponent will try to prevent your advances by placing their pieces to attack the place where you want to move to.

You are quite right about strong players not always being good at explaining their moves, but if you want to learn, you have to go where you can find what you are looking for, so once you are ready, you might want to try some of the higher level books.  You might find that if you put some time into them, you can get something out.

Jacob Aagaard ATTACKING MANUAL 1: BASIC PRINCIPLES is a book you seem to be looking for. It's about setting up those attacking positions were you can use your tactical puzzles training in. Not particularly easy though, but very entertaining.

Bronstein's Zürich book. I'm serious, it's cheap, you'll love it, it does precisely what you ask - from beginning to end of each game.

It was the de rigeur chess bible of all strong Russian chess players.

Neil Mcdonald "Planning" is excellent.

Do you know anything about the Attacking DVDs vs the books? 

You guys mentioned a lot of books. Though the Zurich 1953 one as well as Art of Middle Game, seem interesting, but isn't that a bit difficult to understand? I don't have any game databases, and I'd be following their notation, is it easy to understand?

All the book suggestions I have seen above are good.  Silman's How to Reassess Your Chess helped me and a 4th edition is due out later this year.  You have to let go of the idea that the best plan in any position is to attack the king or align your pieces so tactics will appear.  There are many other plans that are possible in chess and Silman reviews them.  Once you know them you will be better prepared to choose a plan that fits the position in front of you.  THEN, the tactics will appear.