The Ultimate Chess Strategy Book: Volume 1
By Alfonso Romero
Amador Gonzalez de la Nava
Grandmaster Alfonso Romero comes from Spain and was runner-up in the 1984/5 European Junior Championship. He has represented his country in several Olympiads, winning an individual bronze medal at the 2002 event.
Amador Gonzalez de la Nava is a FIDE Master. He is also from Spain, and is a chess teacher and writer.
The opening is reaching its end, and we must make a pivotal decision: what shall our middlegame strategy be? Do we seek an active plan to profit from our strengths and highlight the opponent's weaknesses? Or do we adopt prophylaxis, attending to our own position's shortcomings and hindering the opponent's plans? Alternatively, are there any ready-made plans that we know from other games that can be tailored to fit our position?
The authors present 90 'multi-choice' tests where the reader faces this task. In detailed solutions, they explain the best solution, and why other possibilities are less convincing. We develop a feel for how the decision is made, while painlessly building our 'repertoire' of plans in typical positions.
All the examples in this book arise from Queen's Pawn or Flank Openings, and are arranged by opening and level of difficulty. Many are drawn from games by virtuoso strategists such as Karpov and Petrosian. In all cases, the game is annotated in full, so we see the consequences of the critical decision, while also appreciating the finer points of some of the most instructive games in chess history.
Each of the examples is listed with the starting moves all the way to the critical position also including some light annotations. Here is given a short summary of what has happened through the opening and a question is posed for the reader to answer through multiple choice.
Close to 60 pages are used for showing the examples and over 130 are used to talk about the solutions. The solutions tell the "Theme" of the answer e.g. something like exploiting the development advantage. Also it goes through explaining why some moves work and others don't. Also included is the rest of the game for the reader to see how to use the correct plan to finish off the opponent.
Whether you are an intermediate player looking to train your skills in closed positions or an advanced player looking to challenge yourself, this is a good work to check out. The examples are clear, and even if you don't find the correct answer you are sure to learn a lot just from reading the solutions provided!
NSG Rating = 9.2 of 10