Training

The path to chess improvement is long. It’s not enough to master the openings and the endgame, there’s still the middle game to learn. Although chess is a game of tactics, they don’t just appear on the board, they need to be crafted. Players do that by improving their positions until combinations and tactical solutions present themselves. Part of this is learning the strategic themes of typical middle game structures, of how to play a particular middle game based on the pawn structure and piece configurations. There’s also the skill of taking advantage of positional weaknesses in a non-tactical way.

Books on this shelf are about teaching the player how to improve their middle game arsenal, how to play certain kinds of positions.