Secrets of Positional Chess

How to Exploit Strengths and Weaknesses on the Chessboard

How can one determine if a piece is weak or strong? Or if a square is weak or strong? These are the principal questions that grandmaster and trainer Drazen Marovic addresses in this important book.

By discussing carefully-chosen games and positions, Marovic explains how to recognize good and bad features of positions, and how to make use of one's advantages and exploit the opponent's weaknesses. One repeatedly sees 'weaknesses' that are unexploitable (and therefore are not weaknesses at all), possibilities of surrendering certain squares in order to gain more important ones, and material sacrifices to exploit major weaknesses.

Topics include:

• Outposts
• Strength and weakness on files and diagonals
• Vulnerabilities on the first and second ranks
• Static weakness and attack
• Characteristics of the pieces

Drazen Marovic is a grandmaster from Croatia, who has won medals as both player and trainer for various national teams. His pupils include Bojan Kurajica, World Under-20 Champion in 1965, and Al Modiahki of Qatar, the first Arabian grandmaster. Marovic has a wealth of experience as a writer, editor and television commentator on chess. He is currently the trainer of the Croatian national team. This is his third book for Gambit. His two previous books, Understanding Pawn Play in Chess and Dynamic Pawn Play in Chess, have been warmly received by the chess-playing public.

"If you play through the games Marovic writes about, your positional feel and understanding will be much better." - Thomas Schian, Rochade

"Marovic is the author of a few highly praised books on the soul of chess ... but here he seeks to show how players deal with positional strengths and weakness. Numerous games and game fragments are used to provide insights ... there is also an excellent section dealing with the good and bad points of the various pieces" - Bab Wilders, Nederlands Dagblad

"As in his previous works, Marovic's deep knowledge shines through and he makes welcome use of classics and not just recent games. This work looks at many important positional principles, such as the weakness of the second rank or the use of rooks on semi-open files ... the club player who takes time to study its many themes, and hundreds of well-explained examples, should significantly boost the depth of their positional understanding memory bank, which cannot but help in their own games." - IM Richard Palliser

"for a feast of further instructive examples including demonstrations of power and co-ordination among pieces and pawns, I can recommend GM Dražen Marović's Secrets of Positional Chess." - GM Paul Motwani, The Scotsman

"The Croatian GM explains well 'How to exploit strengths and weaknesses on the chessboard', as the subtitle says; therefore the book is recommended." - Dr Erik Rausch, Rochade

"The publisher Gambit again has expanded its list of esteemed books-for-learning with a convincing work. Secrets of Positional Chess is highly recommended for every ambitious player." - Schachmarkt