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Steve Goldberg North America:
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 The Amateur's Mind
game and wondered, “But why can’t White by Jeremy Silman
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 “Steinitz’s 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
Play through and download follows:
the games from
ChessCafe.com in the Permanent Advantages
DGT Game Viewer.
● Material advantage ChessCafe Puzzle Book 2
The Complete ● Bad king position by Karsten Müller
DGT Product Line ● 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

Temporary Advantages

● Bad piece position Forcing Chess Moves

● Inharmoniously placed pieces by Charles Hertan
● 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 Steinitz’s 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 aren’t. 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 Grooten’s 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 White’s 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 opponent’s 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 Anand’s “bad
bishop.” This motif is a particular favorite of Grooten’s. 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. It’s quite reminiscent of the
approach Jeremy Silman takes in his highly instructive text, The
Amateur’s 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 one’s 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 couldn’t help but feel like I was
reading a 21st century version of the Nimzovitch 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
Grooten’s 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. It’s not that Grooten presents ideas that aren’t already
known, but he presents them in a manner that is clear and which the
reader can readily absorb. “Now it’s just a matter of technique” may
suffice for players on the international circuit. The rest of us want to see
how it’s done, and that is what Grooten does in this book.

Order Chess Strategy for Club Players

by Herman Grooten

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