In honor of Chess Strategy for Club Players winning the ChessCafe.

com 2009 Book of the Year award, we thought we would take the opportunity to look back at our review of it. Interested readers can also peruse an excerpt here. Readers who order Chess Strategy for the Club Player can save an extra ten percent off our already low price by entering the coupon code "grooten10" (without the quotes) at checkout. This offer is valid until February 16, 2010.

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Not Just a Matter of Technique

Steve Goldberg
Chess Strategy for Club Players, by Herman Grooten, 2009 New in Chess, Figurine Algebraic Notation, Paperback, 412pp., $29.95 I suspect that most chess players from North America are not familiar with Herman Grooten, but this Dutch international master has trained grandmasters Loek Van Wely and Jan Werle, as well as several international masters. Perhaps even more importantly, he has trained countless club players. How many times have you seen an annotated game and wondered, But why cant White take on f5? or What does that really mean that Black is weak on the dark squares? Grooten is able to speak to the non-master, the club player, in a way that eludes many other chess authors. The positional principles known as Steinitzs Elements, as formulated by Wilhelm Steinitz and later categorized by Emanuel Lasker, form the basis for this outstanding book. Grooten presents these basic principles as follows: Permanent Advantages

Forcing Chess Moves by Charles Hertan

Play through and download the games from ChessCafe.com in the DGT Game Viewer.

My System by Aron Nimzowitsch

Material advantage Bad king position Passed pawns in the middlegame Weak pawns for the opponent Strong and weak squares Pawn islands Strong pawn centre Control of a diagonal Control of a file Bishop pair Control of a rank

The Amateur's Mind by Jeremy Silman

Temporary Advantages

Bad piece position Inharmoniously placed pieces Advantage in development Concentration of pieces in the centre (centralization) Space advantage

A look at the table of contents shows how Grooten follows these Elements in the book:

1 Steinitzs Elements 2 The eye of the grandmaster 3 Thought process and line of thinking

4 Material advantage 5 Weakened king position 6 Passed pawn 7 Weak pawns 8 Training experiment 9 Strong and weak squares 10 The pawn islands theory 11 The pawn centre 12 The diagonal 13 Quiz: strong square 14 The open file 15 The bishop pair 16 Control of a rank 17 A piece out of play 18 Quiz: open file 19 Harmony and coordination 20 Lead in development 21 Centralization 22 Space advantage 23 Quiz: space advantage 24 Solutions 25 Epilogue

Grooten writes in a clear, infectious manner. For example, in chapter 3, in a subsection titled The key to success, he states, There are no two ways about this. Making the right assessment and building up a reasoning which is founded on logic this is the key to success. First we have to discover which factors are of importance and which arent. Only after that will we be able to choose the correct plan. And then, accurate calculation will still be necessary. All in all, no simple task. I love Grootens understanding of what must be the great majority of players when he writes, Sometimes, while playing through a game between grandmasters, we read the sentence and the rest is a matter of technique at the end of the analysis. The author assumes that it is clear to everyone that the player in question will know how to convert his advantage into a win. How he does this is apparently not considered to be interesting, since at this point the commentary usually stops. The author tacitly takes for granted that a good player knows how to cash in on his advantage. However, in practice this stage of the game turns out to be not as self-evident as it seems. Grooten then goes on to explain what Alexander Kotov described as schematic thinking, which refers to thinking in terms of plans instead of specific moves. A couple excellent illustrative games follow. Each chapter is replete with clear instruction, followed by a number of games or game segments that reinforce the principle under discussion. At the end of each chapter are four exercises that allow the reader to gauge his or her grasp of the material, with clear explanations provided by the author. Sprinkled throughout the book the reader will find general rules that may assist him in formulating sensible plans based on a given position. For example, in the chapter on passed pawns, Grooten looks at the following position:

It appears likely that White may obtain a central passed pawn while Black may eventually have an outside passed pawn on the queenside. Grooten asks where Whites rooks should be placed. Most of his students wish to place the rooks at c1 and d1, but he notes that most grandmasters will place their rooks at d1 and e1. Why? Grooten explains that White wants to keep the major pieces on the board and exchange minor pieces, and this is more easily accomplished with rooks on d1 and e1. On the other hand, Black would prefer the opposite to trade major pieces and keep the minor pieces on the board. Again, a reader may ask why this is so. Grooten explains simply that an outside passed pawn may be converted especially well in an endgame with minor pieces only. Makes sense. Similarly, in another chapter Grooten writes, It is known that a backward pawn on a half-open file first has to be carefully blocked before it can be targeted. The reason for this is simple: the superior side wants the weakness to be fixed as deeply as possible in the opponents camp, so that the latter will also suffer from a dire lack of space. Then he proceeds to show several examples of this very technique in action. In Chapter 8: Training Experiment, Grooten presents to the reader a Judit Polgar-Vishy Anand game from Wijk aan Zee, 1998, in which Polgar won a difficult game with her good knight versus Anands bad bishop. This motif is a particular favorite of Grootens. He explains that he wished to test four of his young but quite talented students by having them play the Polgar side while he defended the Anand side. He started from a specific middlegame position in the game, and played each student separately. Three of these students lost and one drew, but the subtle errors they made are instructive for the reader. Its quite reminiscent of the approach Jeremy Silman takes in his highly instructive text, The Amateurs Mind. And on and on the book goes. Clear explanations, lucid examples, challenging exercises. But Grooten is not a dry storyteller. In the chapter on Harmony and coordination he explains how the martial art of Tai Chi, which is about maintaining ones inner balance, relates to chess. If you take care that everything is in harmony within your own ranks, he says, nothing much can happen to you. Of course, a player must watch carefully which blows the opponent wants to strike. Shades of Josh Waitzkin and his outstanding tome, The Art of Learning. Of course, experienced players understand that no rule applies at all times, and sometimes one rule will conflict with another. Therefore, Grooten explains, it is important when looking at these Steinitz Elements to learn to delve deep into a position in order to identify the most important characteristics. Granted, this is easier said than done, but in Chess Strategy for Club Players, I couldnt help but feel like I was reading a twenty-first century version of the Nimzowitsch classic My System, without the flowery prose. My only complaint is that non-exercise diagrams are not labeled with whose turn it is to move. The text that follows makes this clear, but I often wanted to be able to stop and assess a position before reading Grootens comments, and this proved difficult to do, not knowing which side was on move. This observation aside, Chess Strategy for Club Players is an outstanding positional primer. Its not that Grooten presents ideas that arent already known, but he presents them in a manner that is clear and which the reader can readily absorb. Now its just a matter of technique may suffice for players on the international circuit. The rest of us want to see how its done, and that is what Grooten does in this book.

Order Chess Strategy for Club Players by Herman Grooten Readers who order Chess Strategy for the Club Player can save an extra ten

percent off our already low price by entering the coupon code "grooten10" (without the quotes) at checkout. This offer is valid until February 16, 2010.

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