p.178 I maintain that positional play as such has nothing mysterious about
it; any amateur who has studied my elements (in the first nine chapters) must find it easy to come
to terms with this way of playing. All he has to do is:
1. get rid of the "weeds" which are strangling his thought process.
2. follow the rules laid down in what follows
p.178 A typical and widespread misconception on the part of the amateur we are speaking about starts from
the idea that every single move must immediately achieve something; this means that he is always looking for moves which threaten
something or which parry a threat by his opponent, and in doing so he totally neglects all other possible moves, such as waiting
moves, or moves to reposition his pieces, etc. We must really insist that this way of looking at things is quite wrong. On
the whole, positional moves are neither threats nor defensive moves; the way I see things, it is much more a question of moves
which are intended, in the wider sense, to consolidate our position and therefore it is necessary to bring our own
pieces into contact with the squares which are strategically important for us or for our opponent (see later under the headings
"the struggle against freeing moves by your opponent" and "overprotection").
p.183 Next to prophylaxis [anticipation of problems], the idea of the "general mobility" of the pawn mass
constitutes one of the main pillars of my teachings on positional play... It is extremely important to strive for mobility
(of the pawn mass) since a mobile mass can have a crushing effect because of its lust to expand... So when talking about a
mobile pawn mass, what we need is a general mobility of the mass, not so much that each and every pawn should in itself be
mobile.
p.200 What is important for positional play is not attack, nor even defence, but only consolidation!
