Positional Decision Making in Chess

Gelfand's book is truly outstanding. But please note that the stronger you are as a chess player the more you'll get out of this book. This book is for serious students of chess, not the casual player.

A good read. Instructive chess anecdotes of famous players and chess history. The games were fun to play through and Boris's comments were very entertaining and informative. I am rated a little above 2000 and the book was pretty easy to follow. I highly recommend the book.

Very easy to go through , read it in just a week the amount of information that I could absorb without being bogged down by countless variations was amazing! My one criticism would be it has too much of the chebaneko slav by the end I felt like an expert in the opening! Topics like the chapters the 'squeeze' and space advantage is worth the price of the book alone!

This is a good study of a few particular aspects of positional chess. I suppose it is too much to ask a single book to cover all of positional chess. Still, this writer is excellent and I have enjoyed the book.

I like the dept of the ideas which constitute the main purpose of this Grand Master and chess autor. I have no complains about the book.

Self instruction

Even though I'm hardly into this book yet I figured I would publish a review as there is hardly anything posted yet. This book was going to be on my wish list but I just couldn't resist and bought it anyway. Like the other two Quality Chess books I own (Learn From the Legends and Advanced Chess Tactics) this one appears to be a gem. It includes five chapters : 1. Playing in the Style of Akiba Rubinstein 2.The Squeeze 3.Space Advantage 4.Transformation of Pawn Structures 5.Transformation of Advantages. The Appendix contains an interview of Gelfand from 2012. I've 'read' through much of the book without putting in the necessary work to get any improvement out of it but enjoy it immensely already. I'm only a 1700 player but feel like I can learn a lot here. There is deep analysis but also plenty of regular English for amateur/club players to understand Gelfand's thinking and ideas. What really attracted me to the book was the fact that I would get to see Rubinstein's games, a player I've always wanted to study, through a top players eyes. In addition to this there are fully annotated battles of Boris versus lots of the Worlds elite including Carlsen, Anand, Kasparov, Aronian, Grischuk and Morozevich. Basically I can't wait to put the time into this book that it really, really deserves! If you're interested in what some notable players think of the book check out the reviews on the Quality Chess website. I will update my review once I get into the meat of the book.

The book helpped me understand why some of my decisions were bad.

This is undoubtedly Boris Gelfand's best book and it is a cut above other books that deal with the middle-game in chess. Gelfand has distilled his vast experience into an engaging read. Insights and smart observations abound. His veneration for Akiba Rubinstein shows how even a great player can learn from previous generations. As in his interviews, Gelfand reveals himself as thoughtful, erudite and with a sometimes wry humour. The second book in the series wasn't as good; this is the one to get.

Basically aagard has sat down beside Gelfand and got him to explain how he made key decisions in words the rest of us can understand. Lots of rubenstein examples too and some very honest comments about his WC match with Vishy. I'm only about 50% of the way through ... but definitely worth 5 stars.

Excellent read!!Reading into the minds of a Super GM became easy reading through this book. Boris keeps it is so simple that his concepts are easy to understand and implement in real games.

Excellent advanced book. The inner thinking of a top player is very well explained. For example, Gelfand shows what he did learn from Rubinstein, and how he use it in some games.

Prima boek