The Art of the Middle Game

by Paul Keres, Alexander Kotov

Translated by Harry Golombek. Superb guide to neglected area of chess. Two formidable grandmasters cover attacking the king, defense, importance of pawn structure, analysis, much more. Authoritative introduction by Harry Golombek. Belongs in the library of every serious chess enthusiast. Indexes of players and middle-game themes.

Genres: Chess, Games, Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1961

Reviews

[Aaron Esthelm · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think there are some useful tools in this to learn from some older games. Combining this with modern tools like stockfish analysis you cant really squeeze out some interesting tactics from the positions. My main issue is this book feels like a good tool for begininers to understand the middlegame but its written in old chess notation which even I as an intermediate chess player had to take some time to learn. Frankly I still struggle with the postions having two rook files makes sense sense theres two rooks but makes figuring out what goes where confusing.

Beyond that I think after learning this older notation I found some interesting ways to form plans within this book and I look forward to putting what I learned to the test.