The Essence of Chess Strategy Volume 1

How to learn strategy? Can it belearned? It can be, of course. And these volumes are the perfect guide to learn(or, more precisely, to learn to understand) strategy.

Our idea is to throw light on all the strategicconcepts in these volumes. To help you navigate more simply, we have divided allthe material into two volumes. This first one is exploring the elements ofstrategy, explaining typical and essential principles in detail. The second oneis about pawn structures. Of course, structures
themselves actually mean nothing without recognizing patterns and principlesfrom the elements (because pawn structures are used to determine the values ofpieces, for instance). That is why volume two can be considered as an advancedlevel of strategy. Generally, examples will be based on material adopted fromvolume one and upgraded.

Volume one is divided into ninechapters and the titles suggest the topic explained in detail. Examples are arrangedfrom less to more complex and I recommend that the reader not skip examplesinside the chapters. Moreover, I would ask the reader to go through thechapters in the order in which they are presented in the book, because the mostimportant topics come first. For instance, centralization is the leadingprinciple and it must be kept in mind while working on other topics!