Increasing Positional Skills through Classical

I have a coach, @SantolanBoys61 on chess.com. He helps me a bit but my improvement is primarily to my own direction.

Oh, well then if your coach does not already teach you positional concepts than you should get a book. Another thing I recommend is to have a google doc and a database with all the concepts you know so that you can review and refer back to them.

However, it is also strategic, and many times there are intricacies from structures that can only be found in books or through a private coach. My concern regarding adopting this training technique is: do most of you move the pieces while going over the variations, or do you just do it in your head? I've tried both, but I find it distracting when I have to go back and figure out where my pieces were before moving them. For more details [Url]https://nongamstopcasino.uk/[/Url].

Use two boards. A small one to keep track of the position, and a larger one to play out the variations. Then you can revert to the game position just by copying from the small board to the large one.

I have heard very good things about Jacob Aagaard's Grandmaster Preparation series. It is too advanced for me at my level but would probably help you a lot.

He's written a book on calculation, one on strategic play, and one on positional play.

I’ll see if I can get that on my kindle then, seems very interesting, thanks!

Okay been meaning to make such a list for a while I guess it has a purpose now.

I don't think I can help you much since you are more experienced and higher rated than me, so you already have better knowledge at all aspects of the game. Best way I can think of improving what you want to improve is by reading chess books properly. Unfortunately you say that they don't help you and I will just ask have you ever gave it a second chance, no harm if it goes bad. Some other ways would be hiring a coach that can help you improve and give you good material, I wouldnt do that unless Im being serious as a chess player. What to do is something you will have to figure out on your own if you dont want a coach, but there is plenty of videos, lessons, courses out there waiting for you to discover them. So look up for them on yt, here, on lichess studies, analyze games of grandmasters playing any opening from your repertoire and so on.

Good Positional Chess, Planning & Strategy Books for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/introduction-to-positional-chess-planning-strategy

Pawn Play and Structure - for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/chess-books-on-pawn-play-and-structure

     You were so soundly beaten by someone with a USCF otb rating of 2000 that you feel the need to improve your knowledge of positional play. Yet your rating here is over 2000. This shows you that the type of chess this person has played--longer time controls with more thinking about each move and deeper analysis of positions--teaches a player more about chess than the hundreds of speed games you have played. So try playing classical games, preferably otb, and go over the game with your opponents afterwards to learn what they thinking about and you missed.

     As many others here have suggested, books ARE the way to learn positional principles, unless you have a high-rated expensive coach. Tarrasch, Nimzovich, Euwe and others have written excellent books explaining positional principles.

I can do both, fine with either setup, really. I don't have the time to go through a book like that, so I've just been using my head so far.

try the chess.com lessons and see if there are any positional stuff in there

Looked, and it doesn't really seem to help that much... find any good ones?

there's this lesson called "positonal masterpieces"

you might wanna check that one out

In order to improve positional play, we must first understand what is positional play. Positional play is improving your position while degrading your opponent's. Familiar? Openings! 

In openings, one aims to develop (improve) their pieces while hindering the development (improvement) of your opponent's. 

In short, by playing positionally, you are trying to improve your position and to degrade your opponent's. 

Now, it is important to understand that positional play often revolves around middle game plans. Whether it is the coordination of your knights to an advantageous outpost in a closed position, or the use of your open file to attack and win a weak isolated pawn.

In order to strive for a positional advantage, you must possess the ability to evaluate any position. This can be done in several ways including:

- Pawn Structure

- King Saftey

- Center Control

- Space

- Material

- Time

Once you are able to evaluate a position, you should know what to improve on based on the position and be able to create a middle game plan. You should be able to know what to do in the position.

Also, I know the OP probably knows this, I don't think I can help better than his coach can, after all.  But I give this brief example to some other less experienced players who are looking on how to improve their positional play.