Complete Chess Strategy

Few books focus on the middle phase of chess, the stretch between the opening and the endgame where games are often decided. Ludek Pachman's trilogy addresses that stage, and this final volume completes it. The author argues that players cannot memorize the enormous number of possible variations, so they must instead grasp the underlying principles and the recurring positions and manoeuvres that arise. His annotated examples are meant to sharpen a player's sense of which positions to aim for, how to plan toward them, and how to rank competing priorities.

Rather than presenting isolated moves, Pachman teaches largely through complete games, because he believes a game has to be studied as a whole. The author is a former Czechoslovak Grandmaster who later lived in West Germany and has competed in international chess since 1945. This book is a substantially revised version of a series he first published in Czech, and it was translated from German by English International Master John Littlewood.