Book Review: Winning Chess Strategies by Yasser Seirawan

Taking lessons from Yaz and the classics, even though the book is starting to show its age.

Disclaimer: I have not read any other book in the Winning Chess series. This book acts as a part of a whole, but it’s sufficiently competent as a standalone that you don’t need to read the others to get the full benefit from this book — this book’s merits speak for itself.

Introduction

Winning Chess Strategies came on my radar multiple years ago, when I had first listened to the Perpetual Chess Podcast’s Chess Books Recaptured episode on it featuring Neal Bruce. Neal’s enthusiasm for the book on that episode doesn’t seem possible to overstate.

I’m not quite as enthusiastic but I do think this is a good book and despite showing its age a little bit (mostly due to the influence of chess engines on modern chess analysis habits), the reader can learn a lot. If you want to find out if it’s for you, read along.

Seirawan’s aim with this book is to “show you chess as a science.” In other words, what sort of techniques do masters employ in order to beat one another? Seirawan thinks he can give you the basics in about 11 chapters and I think he does a pretty good job. This book is quite approachable, and I would say that players in the range of 1200 to 1600 on chess.com would be prime candidates for reading it.

Basic static advantages

To start, Seirawan discusses strategy and defines it succinctly: “Strategy, then, is the purposeful pursuit of a simple goal: to gain an advantage of some sort of your opponent.” He breaks down the static advantages he has in mind:

• More material or “force”

• Superior piece mobility

• Superior pawn structure

• More territory or “space”

• Safe King position

These are the basic elements he asks the reader to focus on and the rest of the chapters deal with them in a relatively simple but systematic sequence to capitalize on these advantages.

The first game in the book made one of the biggest impressions upon me the first time I played through it, and you can tell that Seirawan really liked this game he played against World Champion Anatoly Karpov back in 1982. The example is poignant, and acts as a great example of what Seirawan does best in this book, which is annotate his own games. I find Seirawan a measure less inspiring when he’s playing through the classics however. It may simply be that I desire deep analysis and that he is using them for illustrative examples rather than 100% objectively accurate breakdowns of what occurred in the game — it’s here that I feel that Seirawan does the most backsplaining.

What is “backsplaining”? I’ll let FM Alex King explain

And for a more in-depth conversation from Alex about this concept, see this episode of the Chess Angle Podcast (starts at 35:52)

So, while I don’t want to say that Seirawan’s analysis is shallow, I do think it may run the risk of making chess strategy look rather easy especially today when most players who play an OTB game against a hungry opponent knows that there are a lot of possibilities to defend a difficult position such as appears in the majority of games in this book. Some positions in which Yaz declares that a player has failed their strategy are, according to the computer, just as equal as they were before. This is one way that I think Winning Chess Strategies is showing some gray hairs. This isn’t a fault of the book as much as it is just an indication of just how much computers have changed the way we look at chess.

+’s and -’s

Overall, however, I still found myself making lots of highlights in my Kindle version. Note: I also have the Chessable version, and it’s a very faithful translation from book to MoveTrainer, but speaking for myself, the Kindle version or book, with either a chess board or an analysis board on a chess.com Library collection or a lichess.org Study is my preference for strategy books like this. If you absolutely cannot be bothered setting up an analysis board on a website, just spend the extra money on the Chessable version (they also have an optional video package for the course, if you’re feeling spendy). Otherwise, get the e-book ($10 on Kindle) or a paper copy and play through the games using whatever method you find most enjoyable.

Some of my favorite highlights were:

• “Don’t try to make it exciting! Try to make it safe and easy!”

• “A piece does not control the square that it is sitting on.” (The first time I read this blew my mind — it was simple, but also obviously true, and I had never thought about this before that moment).

• “[labeling pawns as isolated, doubled, or backward] is actually a form of chess bigotry. Why should [those labels] signify that a pawn is weak? In chess, a pawn or square is only weak if it can be attacked. If an enemy piece cannot get your pawn, then there is no reason to worry about its safety, regardless of whether it is isolated, doubled, or backward.”

And my favorite line by far comes from this famous game between Petrosian and Taimanov

Petrosian-Taimanov U.S.S.R. Championship, 1955. White to play

After 8…Bd6, Yasser remarks: “Black’s …Bb4-d6 turns out to be a waste of time. Petrosian doesn’t immediately try to refute his opponent, though; he just sorts of flows over Taimanov like an ancient but irresisible glacier.”

This line always makes me laugh and gives a bit of insight into Seirawan’s writing style.

But also, having re-read this book a few times, when I came across the following line, I highlighted it, finding that I actually had a bit of a disagreement:

“Always attack a pawn chain at its base.”

A bit dogmatic? I wrote down: “Even this is not necessarily true — if you can attack a pawn chain at the front and create a weak isolated pawn, isn’t this also a viable plan?”

And then consider the below position (Diagram 101) found on page 171 on the Kindle version. Think about what you would play with Black before you continue reading.

Abrahamson - Ashe, Los Angeles, 1994; from Diagram 101. Black to play.

Here Yaz writes: “I would be […] inclined to play 1…h6 2.Bh4 Nf5 3.Bg3 Nxg3 4.hxg3 e6 which gives Black two Bishops and a very flexible pawn structure that favors those bishops.”

But in the game, Black played 1…c4, and Yaz labeled it with the dubious mark. What do you think Stockfish 16 thinks is best here? At depth 22 in either chess.com or lichess.org’s analysis boards with the “full” version of the browser-based Stockfish, 1…c4 is slightly preferable to 1…h6. I’m not shaming Yasser for liking his move better. I am just pointing out that a modern player, even myself as a player nowhere near Yaz’s strength would possibly see 1…c4 and think of it as a natural move. I wrote in my notes that I would play 1…c4 without a second thought. It doesn’t deserve the ?! he awarded it.

This is basically the essence of my caveats about Winning Chess Strategies. That being said, the advice is so good and Yaz is entertaining as an author, so I don’t find this detracts from the experience of learning — this may actually make reading the book a bit more fun.

A bit more about the book.

Most of the chapters end with a few test questions, some of which ask for a solution to some positional puzzle, and some of which simply ask the player to evaluate a move or a plan and whether it is worthwhile. When I first read this back in 2020 for the first time, I found some of these puzzles rather difficult. In contrast, even a couple years removed from the last time I read the book, I basically knew all of the ideas behind those positions and was able to relatively confidently find the right move or plan pretty quickly most of the time. For what it is worth, I would describe myself as an intermediate-skilled player, whose positional skills have improved quite a bit since the first read. I am not 100% certain, but I can probably credit the multiple read-throughs that I’ve undertaken through the years — whether on the Chessable version, or the Kindle version that I picked up as I read through the book with some friends for a book club I ran.

The final chapter of Winning Chess Strategies sets a good example by providing a short but entertaining score of classic games (besides all the ones he employed as illustrative examples earlier in the book). I think that one good way to learn chess is to watch strong players play chess. Yaz clearly thinks the same and gives a smattering of examples from his clear influences, which includes many world champions and players who might have been world champion. This final collection is sparse, but not without heart — but where the true heart of this book lies is in Yaz telling the story of his very own games, and that’s what I found most enjoyable and instructive in this book.

The Verdict and Other Options

Winning Chess Strategies is good enough that I would recommend it to any player in the 1200-1600 rating range looking for a solid primer on basic chess strategy. I think there are probably better books that have been released since it came out over 20 years ago, but as far as volume of content and length and breadth, it slots nicely between the quite succinct (and addictively enjoyable) Simple Chess and the deeper and more technical The Amateur’s Mind. Of all of these, however, I think Winning Chess Strategies reflects the most of its age, which is ironic since it is the most recent of the three, and this can be a bit of a detraction. All of them have their particular emphases, but they all excel in being readable and entertaining while also remaining educational.

My final score for Winning Chess Strategies:

4/5

P.S. If you only have room for one book, check the other reviews for my thoughts on those before making your decision.

P.P.S. It’s OK — I know you’re going to buy all three of them anyways.