All Grandmasters agree that honing your positional analysis in games is a key plank to chess improvement. But how do you do it effectively and efficiently?
GM Jacob Aagaard shares the simple three-step tool that he has used with club players and elite-level grandmasters alike to improve their positional decision-making.Grandmaster Preparation: Positional Play is the second in this
Quality Chess series following
Grandmaster Preparation: Calculation. GM Aagaard's courses are unlike any other on Chessable and are specifically for players who aspire to be strong. Very strong.
Direct your focus with Aagaard's simple 3-step tool
GM Aagaard is a hugely-experienced trainer who has taught thousands of players at all levels. He has worked with top GMs such as Sam Shankland and Boris Gelfand and coached national teams.
GM Aagaard is also a chess writer renowned for his meticulous approach. He leaves no stone unturned in presenting a full guide to game analysis.
"The most ambitious project I have undertaken in my professional life" - GM Jacob Aagaard on his Grandmaster Preparation series
Working from the starting point that all players who aspire to play at international level have a certain amount of positional understanding, Aagaard lays out an easy-to-follow training plan that will improve everyone's intuition and positional decision-making.
You will be taught to analyze positions using three questions Aagaard uses. This intention is not just to hone positional understanding, but to teach positional judgment and decision-making.
A practical tool to use in games
In 227 exercises, Grandmaster Preparation: Positional Play simplifies his principles and makes them practical so you can utilize them in your games.
Aagaard emphasizes that doing it right is more important than getting it right - and for that reason, Chessable users are encouraged to toggle hints off to experience the same difficulty level as the actual book.Aagaard said the ultimate goal of this course is to show a path towards playing chess at grandmaster level for those who do not have access to a good trainer.
Grandmaster Jacob Aagaard won the British Championship at his first and only attempt. He is the only chess author to have received the Boleslavsky Medal as well as the Guardian, ECF and ChessCafe Book of the Year awards. He is a FIDE Senior Trainer, and on his retirement from professional chess he has taken up the post as trainer for the Danish elite. His training material is used by amateurs, grandmasters and World Champions alike.
I like the books Positional Play and Strategic Play. After I studied them, my pieces started to co-ordinate better.
GM David Navara
Positional Play offers the reader 222 well-chosen positions to solve, drawn primarily, but not exclusively, from recent practice. These positions are arranged around three themes: weaknesses, pieces and prophylaxis. Even those unable to solve the positions will derive benefit from the effort and the thorough solutions.
Accepted practice holds that all chess players should incorporate thirty minutes a day solving tactics. An extra half hour going through Positional Play would be time well spent.
Highly Recommended.
IM John Donaldson
The best three chess books: The brilliant Grandmaster Preparation series (Strategic Play, Positional Play and Calculation), which I would warmly recommend to anyone wanting to reach the next step with their chess."
James Adair, CHESS Magazine
Aagaard is an excellent writer and a skilled pedagogue. His examples clearly illustrate the themes he is trying to describe, and the solutions to the exercises are clear and comprehensive.
Positional Play, like all of the books in the Grandmaster Preparation series, is not a book for the faint of heart. Effort, however, will be repaid with increased understanding and perhaps even Elo points to boot. It can be warmly recommended to players over 1800 and those slightly lower if plucky and willing to work."
John Hartmann
