How can i improve my positional play?

I would like to know if anyone can tell me how can i improve my positional play?

That depends on what you mean by positional

But I'd focuson not always necessarily going after theh king. At certain levels of chess it works just because people make a lot more mistakes. Instead, you should focus on putting a piece in a position where it exerts more influence on important squares.

1st: Identify a piece (or pieces) that are poorly placed and need to get involved in the fight

2nd: Prioritize objectives

3rd: Make sure you can get a piece to a square where it can't easily be pushed away or the whole process only leads to a loss of tempo

P.S. I came up with these rules really fast so wait for more people to comment before you take these to heart.

make it so the opponent will be made to mistake or will have to go into a trap

Hmm... how does a player increase their positional skill.  At first this seems hard to answer because anyone below at least master level couldn't correctly call themselves a predominantly positional player -- but of course we're all able to make use positional ideas.

The essence of positional play is understanding what makes the relative values of the pieces relative.  An an easy example, in the middle of a middle game not all minor pieces are worth "3" -- in fact you can often tell who the stronger player is after 20 or so moves by looking to see if someone has superior minor pieces.

So you would study concepts such as space, superior minor piece, better (pawn) structure, initiative, better development, open lines/key squares.  These combined with illustrative games to drive the points home.  You would also need to study the endgame and have a good grasp of all the basic endgames -- bishop vs bishop, bishop vs knight, knight vs rook, rook vs rook, queen vs queen etc. combine these with pawns on both sides, pawns on one side, split pawns, connected pawns, etc etc.

Books like Silman's "Amateur's Mind" or Stean's "Simple Chess" (don't be fooled by the titles) are good places to start.  Silman's Reassess your chess book is great but more advanced than the last two mentioned.  While for the endgame Silman's endgame course usually comes recommended.  As for illustrative games, Bronstein's Zurich 1953 is a fine classic and the annotations are short and sweet.

First, realize that chess skill is virtually bottomless, so just start filling it with what you can, and make sure that you fill it with the most practical stuff first.

Second, 'positional play' as I understand it really presumes a very high level of tactical ability.  Positional play only gives opportunities for tactics to arise.  By definition (by axiom), all tactics are more important than positional features, otherwise they would be tactics.  Until you are routinely not dropping pawns or pieces to two move combinations, PP will waste your time.

PP is great to start once you start practicising when in your games, you start realizing that say, for instance, after 25 moves, you find that virtually all your moves drop something to a tactic by your opponent.  (because that tactical skill needs be applied to your expected opponents reply).

An example of positional play is basically about setting up opportunities where you have either control of the board, or more tactical opportunities.  Most heralded way of practicising is to play over annotated games of masters.  Couple ways to do that, either a 'guess the move' style, or rapidly.  In the former, give yourself ~5 minutes a move, starting on move 8-10, and see if you can work out why their moves are better than yours/what the ideas are. 

The rapid style is about sheer numbers.  E.g. go to chessgames.com and find all the games by various people, e.g. alekhine, and play them over to see what masters do. 

Ultimately, positional play is about finding things that are valuable that are not m aterial.  Some of those things include time/control of an area/file/rank/square (needs to be able to coordinate with other pieces as simple control of a square is only a means to an end).  Other important things, targets, king safety, ease of play, complexity of defense. 

I also suggest Dan Heisman's novice nook articles. 

Enjoy!

Wonderfully stated.  This is one of the bitterest pills for players to swallow ... there's far too much exciting stuff going when you're orchestrating a minority attack to be bothered about holes in your tactical abilities to actually seal the deal.

 true i completely agree.

I do

Anyway, to improve positional play, start with a good book to get the foundations of strategy, and when you're done with it I recomend you go over positional master games on your own and make as detailed comments as you can about the plans. At the same time you can improve the other parts of the game as well, as likely there will be some tactics and endgames too. Trying to find plans in openings/structures like the hedgehog, queen's gambit, ruy lopez, and french (the list goes on and on btw), and going over games played in openings like this are extremely helpful, and, to me, interesting.

Aside from this, it may help to play lots of long chess games or cc games where you make detailed plans to practice this skill. Those big things are really all there is to it.

As has been said, you cannot be a good positional player unless your tactics are strong, as otherwise you would still blunder every game, and second the best way to achieve a positional goal is through a well timed, tactical, forceful continuation and often this can be required to use the full potential of a position.

Thanks, I just got "My System" that should help me out.

Some books:  How to Reassess Your Chess, The Amateur's Mind, My System

Play over Master Games, especially those with notes.