Tactics are good and you can certainly work on them intensively and there is a bunch of improvement in raw calculation and visualization to be gained there. HOWEVER. Positional understanding is the glue that makes middle game, openings and tactics make sense as a whole. You save a fuckton (excuse my french) of effort when you can immediately disregard a move as a candidate move if your understanding of the position is good. You can now think of ways to either improve the position if no tactics or attacks of weak spots are available yet and now if your opening repertoire is fairly consistent you will understand the middle game of your games much more deeply and ideas behind an opening, target squares, weak squares and so on make that much more sense. Without at least some level of position and strategic understanding chess is exceedingly harder than It already is. Make your life easier, you will thank yourself later. It also makes the game feel less random and its more satisfying to play.
Great stuff! Inspires me to read a chess book!! 🤣🤣 I play weird stuff (Fantasy, Wing Gambit vs Sicilian), 2 Knights vs the French) which most books don’t cover - the Ruy Lopez gets all the love 🤣. But I really like the sound of that Position Sacrifices book, and of course, the winner!! 🤣🤣🙏🙏
What position would you put Pachman's Chess strategy on? How much is it worth to read it? Is it similar to any book from the podcast? What is target audience?
As we said, we can't cover every book! But Neal mentioned on Twitter he prefers the top books included here to Grooten. FWIW I read and enjoyed Grooten's book, its a good choice as well IMO
GM Naroditsky mentions Grooten as his main recommendation to club players. IM Andras as well says that this book is perhaps the best choice for people to whom Helsten book is still too hard (so sub 2000). Just got it and seems incredible with a lot of explanations!
8. Silman's Reassess Your Chess Workbook Supplement
7. The Positional Chess Handbook
6. How to Reassess Your Chess 4th Ed.
5. Improve Your Chess Pattern Recognition
4. Techniques of Positional Play
3. Mastering Positional Sacrifices
2. Practical Chess Exercises
1. Mastering Chess Strategy
Real talk like this is useful. I listened, made notes, and bought accordingly.
Every episode with Neal is like taking a college class. Amazing episode
Great episode! I took a lot of notes, but the bits about wanting to interview Silman didn’t age well 😢
Tactics are good and you can certainly work on them intensively and there is a bunch of improvement in raw calculation and visualization to be gained there. HOWEVER. Positional understanding is the glue that makes middle game, openings and tactics make sense as a whole. You save a fuckton (excuse my french) of effort when you can immediately disregard a move as a candidate move if your understanding of the position is good. You can now think of ways to either improve the position if no tactics or attacks of weak spots are available yet and now if your opening repertoire is fairly consistent you will understand the middle game of your games much more deeply and ideas behind an opening, target squares, weak squares and so on make that much more sense. Without at least some level of position and strategic understanding chess is exceedingly harder than It already is. Make your life easier, you will thank yourself later. It also makes the game feel less random and its more satisfying to play.
Great stuff! Inspires me to read a chess book!! 🤣🤣 I play weird stuff (Fantasy, Wing Gambit vs Sicilian), 2 Knights vs the French) which most books don’t cover - the Ruy Lopez gets all the love 🤣. But I really like the sound of that Position Sacrifices book, and of course, the winner!! 🤣🤣🙏🙏
This is a fantastic topic! Many thanks.
Thanks for this episode!
What position would you put Pachman's Chess strategy on? How much is it worth to read it? Is it similar to any book from the podcast? What is target audience?
Couldnt really say, sorry!
How much has neal bruce improved in the last 2 years?
What is Neal's USCF ID?
My two favorite people!
You need to get out more Braden!
What about grootens book?
As we said, we can't cover every book! But Neal mentioned on Twitter he prefers the top books included here to Grooten. FWIW I read and enjoyed Grooten's book, its a good choice as well IMO
GM Naroditsky mentions Grooten as his main recommendation to club players. IM Andras as well says that this book is perhaps the best choice for people to whom Helsten book is still too hard (so sub 2000). Just got it and seems incredible with a lot of explanations!
Good books