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p.1 In the beginning, I, like many others, found chess to be a simple game...
Suddenly my next plateau was reached - my more experienced opponents wouldn't fall for any of my tricks anymore. Worse than
this, they were slowly but surely grinding me down to defeat with something called "positional chess"... This book
is aimed as an introduction to positional chess
p.7 Assuming we have a material balance in a position, then one of the most important features is
the relative activity of the pieces. There can be an advantage for one side if he has one piece which is
performing several useful functions at the same time. On the other hand, a side can be severely disadvantaged
if one of his pieces is not pulling his or her weight.
p.30 On this occasion, however, there is one overriding feature of the position - the awful placement
of Black's knight on b7.
| Miralles |
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| Emms, black to move |
In this respect the white pawns on b4 and d5 are doing a grand job, not allowing the knight to re-enter
the game... With the knight on b7, Black has a long-term positional disadvantage. Such small positional
details can be vitally important when assessing positions.
p.63 doubled pawns... can be weak in two different ways.
The first of these is that they can be vulnerable to attack... The second weakness is that they can
decrease the mobility of a pawn formation.
p.64 The main problems for White, however, [diagram below, Black to move] are his static weaknesses, including
the miserable set of doubled and isolated c-pawns.
| Parker |
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| Shneider |
Not only are they vulnerable to attack, they are completely immobile
and they also leave gaps around the white king. Added to this, Black's knight has already found itself a great outpost
on c5, where it is completely invulnerable to white pawns.
p.67 So far we've only looked at the negative side of [doubled] pawns, but there are some positives too.
Doubled pawns, especially ones... in the center, can control vital squares... Another positive feature is
that the creation of doubled pawns automatically produces an open file for the possessor of the doubled pawns.
This can be good news for the activity of the rooks.
Naturally each position has to be considered on its own merits, before
deciding whether the doubled pawns are a weakness, a strength, or just plain irrelevant.
p.70 isolated pawns are much more easily attacked if they stand on a half open file as the attacker
can simply move his rooks to this file and the pawn is under threat. Even when the pawn can be adequately defended,
the fact that the possessor of the isolated pawn has to use pieces to defend it means that he will be passively placed
for operations on other parts of the board.
p.125 In Simple Chess [a different book by a different author with the
same name as this book], Michael Stean talked of "space" and "capacity" in a way that was quite enlightening to me.
His words were, 'Any given pawn structure has a certain capacity for accommodating pieces efficiently.
Exceed this capacity and the pieces get in each other's way, and so reduce their mutual activity. The problem
of overpopulation is easy to sense when playing a position - it 'feels' cramped.'
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