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ReviewsCan You Be A Positional Chess Genius?Reviewed by Leopold Lacrimosa 9/29/02 Can You Be A Positional Chess Genius? by IM Angus Dunnington (Everyman Chess, 2002), 144 pp.
His book is a companion to Everyman’s Can You Be A Tactical Chess Genius? by GM Plaskett. The style and format of this book is same, (see my review on Tactical Genius) with the idea of problem solving to achieve a better understanding of chess play. Unfortunately, I felt that it fell short of achieving that goal until I took a second, hard look at this book a few days later and asked myself if I was being fair in my evaluation. As a chess player, I enjoy the positional aspects of the game. When I first picked up Dunnington’s book I initially felt disappointed with it because of the layout being the same as the tactical book and the lack of positional explanations. But also, it was because I approached the subject of the book in the wrong way. When I first read through this volume, I looked at it as if I was going through a tactical manual. When practicing tactics, I was trained to look at a problem for several minutes, pick a solution, check the answer, and move on to the next problem. This is fine for the study of tactics, but not the study of positional chess. After returning to the book a few days later to have a second look, I approached it from another angle. Instead of trying to do the problems quickly, I checked them out with the idea of spending 20 minutes or more on each one (sometimes up to an hour), trying to work out multiple lines to find the correct solution to improve my position or gain a winning edge. The problems then began to make much more sense to me. And with that, I could see that my understanding of the positions would begin to deepen. It was then that my attitude towards this book began to change. Like its companion volume Can You Be A Tactical Chess Genius?, Can You Be A Positional Chess Genius? is set up with ten “Tests”, each consisting of fifteen puzzles. Each puzzle is given a score of 5, 10 or 15 points depending on difficulty, and the reader can score a maximum of 150 for answering all of them correctly. The puzzles range from as far back as 1911 to as late as 1998, and many are well known positions. Each puzzle includes the source, (there are a few composed positions and some from opening theory), the date of the game played, and a key question leading the reader towards the solution. As with the “Tactical” volume, there is a hint section near the back of the book called “Ask a Grandmaster”. The reader is then penalized a few points if he uses the hint from the Grandmaster. The solutions and awarded points to the puzzles can be found in the last section in the back of the book. Again, as with the tactics book, I liked the use of large fonts allowing only two positions per page. The book has a nice look to it, and is easy to read. There’s a lot of useful information and the format is effective. My main criticism is that Dunnington could have made the book useful to a wider audience by including basic explanations of positional play and its elements. It is taken for granted that the reader already has a significant knowledge of these things, possibly by having read Nimzowitsch’s My System. Though I would recommend the use of this book for anyone who wants to improve his or her understanding of positional play, it is definitely not a book for beginners. It’s probably going to be most useful to players who have reached at least the 1600 level and perhaps even the 1800 level.
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You Be A Positional Chess Genius? is a book that I’ve truly looked
forward to reviewing. Little did I know how hard it would be. IM Angus
Dunnington has always been one of my favorite chess authors, for I have
always enjoyed his style of writing and his ability to explain chess to his
readers. 
