Training positional chess

Some rambling thoughts...

I'm currently rated 2000-ish, never had any formal training, just slowly improved over 20 years and now platforming. I think my weak spot is my positional insight and I'm looking for ways to improve it.

I don't really have a conscious systematic thinking process -- in an actual OTB chess game, I am basically calculating lines all the time. I spend lots of time on lines that other people consider just irrelevant to the needs of the position. A good way to get a blank stare from me is saying things like "if you didn't know what to do, why didn't you just go for the thematic plan?" (what thematic plan) or "if you play an opening variation based on pushing through e4-e5, why did you never play it?".

I need a better feel for what I'm supposed to do in any given position.

What I'm doing now is print out a bunch of games from Tata that look interesting, especially from the lower groups, slowly play through them (like three per evening), constantly asking myself "what is white (or black) trying to do here?" and, if they do play a move that seems to have some goal I recognize, "why that move and not this one or that one, don't they work towards the same goal?"

Do you people think that would be the best way of improving my insight over the next half year or so? I'm trying to do without books for now, I believe they only add to the information in my head but don't actually improve my insight when I actually look at a random position much.

You're better than me but...

Isn't the standard-issue advice to concentrate on positions that arise from the openings that you play? Or do you find that these positions vary too much for this advice to be useful?

Matt

I think that would be helpful for you, I use Solitaire Chess in the Chess Life magazine's as a similar purpose.

Chess.com Study Plans for Advanced players are soon to be released. I think a Stoyko-type of exercise is one of the tools: Deeply study some interesting position from a mastergame for 30 minutes and write down all your analyzed lines. Try to compare your analysis to the game move and to engine/coach analysis and try to identify the "wholes" in your chess thinking. 

I have a similar problem. I find that my progress are hampered by my lack of positional knowledge, which I compensate by working a lot at the board.

Here's how I'm tackling the problem at the moment :

- analyzing games with my coach (an IM), which is a very convenient way to learn a lot of positonal patterns in a quick time

- going through annotated games in my openings, with special emphasis on typical plans/ideas

- going through some classical games (extracts) featuring positional play, and playing 'guess the move' (solitaire chess), then checking against the annotations and using the computer to play out some ideas, if needed

- sometimes, I do some pawn structure search in databases, but it's very time-consuming

Later, I think I'll go through some general positional textbook, though I suspect they don't have the kind of positional knowledge I'm needing at the moment.

Hi @kwaloffer—I highly recommend checking out @spochman’s books, “The process of decision making in chess.” 

Has kwaloffer been here since 2012?