Middlegame Improvement

Hello Chess.com members!

I have been playing as well as studying Chess ambitiously for past couple of months. Playing, learning and analysing through my games I have been able to spot and rectify my shortcomings rather smoothly. However, I have a kinda weird shortcoming ie the Kotov Syndrome- where a player just calculates many lines and sometimes calculates the same line or variation again. Also, I fail to come up with an appropriate plans in the Middlegame. As Alexander Kotov said," The plans in the Middlegame can only be obtained ones the characteristics and general assessment of the position is carried out." I have found some hard times in the process of tackling this shortcoming. As a result, I need some help and suggestion. Is there a course book for improving your Positional Understanding and coming up with plans in the Middlegame which would be compatible for my rating strength? 

Thanks for taking your time and posting your suggestions here!

PS: This being my first post on this forum, I sincerely hope that I didn't violate any rules of this site and forum.

I'm of similar strength of you (OP), and there are a few reasonable options I've been reading:

- Pawn Structures by Soltis. 

- Improve your Chess Recognition by Outer.z..ds.

I'd say both books are 'above' our level (1500 blitz) but not by a lot. 

The Soltis book is good for long-term strategic plans, which are usually based on the pawn structure. It helps to know what pawns you're aiming to break through with, and which enemy pawn breaks he's shooting for. He goes through stuff like playing against iso pawns, hanging pawns, etc., which to me are fundamentals of chess strategy (and not at all easy!)

The other book has a lot of pattern/motifs in game fragments that illustrate strategic concepts. More like a 'positional tactic' book, where you have to make the right combo to end up with that superior N or passed pawn, etc. 

I play best when I'm studying one or both of these books a lot, and I actually play worst when I'm mainly studying tactics. Because you still need a lot of tactics to play positional chess, but you're also training yourself to be constantly on the lookout for positional tactics and motifs (like trading off bad pieces to end up with the superior minor piece), whereas when you're in 'all-tactic brain mode', you tend to ignore these subtleties and end up wasting a lot time calculating and hoping for blunders rather than playing good positional moves.

I recommend checking out Jeremy Silman's How to Reassess your Chess, 4th Edition.

He teaches you how to find and develop a plan based on the needs of the position. Also has a lot of general (and useful) positional instruction that can apply to all phases of the game.

Best of luck!

Many book recommenders have said that the Reassess your Chess book is for relatively higher level players. Starting from something basic fundamentals of Middlegame would be good option for my rating strength I guess.

Maybe try Simple Chess by GM Michael Stean. By the way, the Oudeweetering book is called Improve Your Chess Pattern Recognition, and the Soltis book is Pawn Structure Chess.

I agree but I think Simple Chess deals mostly with strategic ideas and somewhat Positional stuff as well. But it doesn't cater all of my needs. Is there something which can help in coming up with plans and stuff in the Middlegame? Thanks for your suggestion though!☺

Maybe try Simple Attacking Plans by Fred Wilson.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708090402/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review874.pdf

That book has some nice reviews. Can you provide me with a link where I can purchase PDF of that book?

Nice suggestions. But the book on Pawn structures seems complicated for our level due to the fact that I don't even know 50% of the opening mentioned in that book. However, the one on Pattern Recognition seems interesting. Hopefully it'll be on my list which I can buy in near future. Thanks for your suggestion!

The Soltis pawn structures book's point is that you don't need to know the openings specifically - by looking at the pawn structure, you can develop reasonable plans even without knowledge of the specific moves of the opening.

That said, I do think there are better books - despite its good points, there are some problems with the analysis (refutations by CPU, esp.)

I'm currently using chess structures: a grandmaster guide. it provides plans in middlegame pawn structures.Quite a good book because the structures are not common to only one opening

you only need to know the structures which will most likely occur in your game