Improve Your Positional Chess

by Carsten Hansen

A practical guide to making positional decisionsNew ebook every diagram is also a link to an interactive Lichess analysis board (via website or app) of that position.“Hansen provides advice and ideas to show you what to look out for to evaluate positions relatively quickly and to help guide you to making correct decisions, both short-term and long-term.” - Mark Donlan, Chess HorizonsThroughout a game of chess, we must constantly make judgements and decisions that cannot be determined simply by calculation. We must then rely on our positional judgement.Good positional skills are primarily developed by experience, but they can also be learnt. In this book, Carsten Hansen provides a wealth of advice and ideas that will help give readers a helping-hand up to new levels of positional understanding. Paramount in this discussion is the player’s need to weigh up positional elements at the board, and decide which are most important for the situation at hand.Topics Quest for WeaknessesWhat is the Initiative?Understanding ImbalancesThe Relative Value of the PiecesDecisions Regarding Pawn-StructuresStructural WeaknessesWhere and How to AttackThe book is rounded off with exercises to test your understanding of the concepts discussed, together with full solutions.“What Hansen excels at is choosing the right examples to illustrate his points - and providing illuminating words to make them accessible to the reader.” - Rick Kennedy, ChessCilleCarsten Hansen is a FIDE Master from Denmark who currently lives in the USA. He has a reputation for writing well-researched books on major chess topics, and is known to many through his painstaking book reviews on the Internet. This is his fourth book for Gambit.“I figure to put about 20 Elo points on to my grade (2433) by the time I’ve finished; that’s how good it is. I can’t really say more than that. Oh, and I am enjoying reading it!” - IM Andrew Martin, Seagaard’s Reviews“Readers will learn not only much about important positional aspects, like exploiting a structural weakness, from this work, but also much about the important aspect of positional sacrifices, something which is often not well understood at club level. For all those looking to improve their overall chess strength, and especially their positional understanding, this is highly recommended.” - Richard Palliser, yorkshirechess-org-uk

Genres: Chess

788 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Carsten Hansen, a Danish FIDE Master at Chess, was born in 1971, a year where the winter came very early and heavy to the region of Denmark where his parents had settled. After his father had shoveled snow for five hours he realized that not even the main roads were being cleared anymore. The national guard came to pick up his pregnant wife and eight hours later Carsten was brought into the world.
At age 14, Carsten became the youngest master player in chess in Denmark at the time. he was, however, soon surpassed by a player that came to play an important role in his writing career several years later, Peter Heine Nielsen.
After a trip to the Soviet Union/Russia (the switch happened during the visit) at the end of 1991, Carsten put his full-time chess-playing days behind him to pursue a career in the shipping industry (where he is still employed).
In late 1995, Carsten was contacted by Peter Heine Nielsen to co-author a chess book on the "Sicilian Accelerated Dragon". Peter had been offered a contract but felt that he wouldn't be able to write the book on his own and since Carsten had played the opening his entire life, it was a natural fit. The book was released in 1998 to high acclaim and near universal positive reviews.
Carsten being eager to write more, contacted another publisher, the recently started Gambit Publications, to write more chess books, whereas Peter pursued his own chess career, reaching a rating peak of above 2700 (the highest for a Danish player) and later became the coach for World Champion Anand from India and is currently coaching the reigning World Champion, Magnus Carlsen.
Carsten then wrote: "The Gambit Guide to the English Opening: 1...e5", "Symmetrical English", "Nimzo-Indian: 4 e3", and "Improve Your Positional Chess", his best-reviewed work to date, it has subsequently been translated into Spanish "Mejore Su Ajedrez Posicional". Recently, the English version book has been released in e-format.
After that, Carsten and Gambit parted ways.
From 1999 to 2013, Carsten was a columnist for the very popular website, ChessCafe.com, run by Hanon Russell. For Russell Enterprises, Carsten co-authored a book with American International Master John Donaldson, "A Strategic Opening Repertoire" and then wrote "Back to Basics: Openings". Another book in the "Back to Basics..." series, on endings is in production. Carsten and Russell Enterprises has released two new titles in the "Winning Quickly at Chess Series", "Miniatures in the Sicilian Najdorf" and "Miniatures in the Queen's Indian: 4 g3", with several more to come in 2016 and 2017.
In October 2016, Carsten's most recent work "The Sicilian Dragon - move by move" was published by Everyman Chess. Two further titles in that series are in production and are due to be released in 2017.
Carsten Hansen lives and works just outside New York City, and still enjoys playing and writing about chess. Aside from his books, Carsten has been a contributor to Skakbladet, Chess Life, New In Chess Yearbook and most recently become a columnist for the new chess quarterly: American Chess Magazine.

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wouldn't use this book as the main handbook for positional chess. However, as a source of additional examples or exercises, it can be useful. For example, I like the game Gelfand-Krasenkow (page 40), which shows that one needs pawn moves to make a weak position even weaker (15...f5?! & 17...e6?!).
Exercise 2.3 is also an interesting case how a "dead draw" position (in my database over 50 games ended without a winner) could be difficult to defend even for good corr-players, as in the game Kerr (2580) vs Meyer (2418).