How can I improve positional chess? I keep losing because I get myself into a bad position

@Le_Patzer83 said in #20:

Tactics. And maybe Simple Chess by Chernev or even.... dun dun dun... How to
Re-Assess Your Chess by Silman! Lol! (Someone had to say the word Silman) ...
The usual Chernev suggestion is LOGICAL Chess. For many, The Amateur’s Mind is more appropriate than the Reassess book.

@kindaspongey said in #21:

The usual Chernev suggestion is LOGICAL Chess. For many, The Amateur’s Mind is more appropriate than the Reassess book.

You are correct. :)

@ohcomeon_1 said in #17:

... Oh, you think that 900-1000 games are decided (as a rule) by something
other than tactical mistakes. To use your way of arguing: nonsense.
After looking at things like 1 e4 d5 2 exd5 Qxd5 3 Nc3 Qa5 4 Bc4 c5 5 Nf3 e6 6 Ng5, I can’t help thinking that some Chernev-reading could be helpful. Maybe also some GM Emms-reading.

@kindaspongey said in #21:

... For many, The Amateur’s Mind is more appropriate than the Reassess book.
"How to Reassess Your Chess, 4th Edition was designed for players in the 1400 to 2100 range." - IM Jeremy Silman (2010)
"... The Amateur's Mind ... (for players 1000 to 1600) ..." - IM Jeremy Silman (2010)

Lichess chess puzzle rating 1700 is very low. And given your rating it is almost imperative that you lose on simple tactical oversights. that is what I do most of the time anyway.

Did short look on one of your games. You simply places knight where it can be taken for free. And then you opponen failed to take. This is what you need to solve. And believe me it is hard unless it sort natural to you.

Just truly fixing that would bring you at least 200-500 points more rating

If you do not already own a copy of "Logical Chess" dont remeber the athor, you should definetly get a copy. This is a good description of how to think when you don't see any tactics in the situation.

Revisit you games and try to analyze with the same techique as in the book. When you acounter a position where this clearly led to a bad situation, use stock fish to give you the right moves and try to recalibrate your thinking so that i will lead to the right conclution the next time you see this, or a similar situation.

I think paying a chess trainer for a couple of hours could also be beneficial.

www.you.ube.com/playlist?list=PL9RQPxG_e-LkKfDgKp5AVNcW5cppg-7ZW

Of course one of your main problems is tactics.
Books might not help much. Practice is better for most players.

Do all of these basic puzzles! : https://stepchess.com/tactic

Really good at tactics you can only get with things like CT-Art but this is mostly too advanced for you.

A nice alternative to Logical Chess Move By Move is A First Book of Morphy by Frisco del Rosario. It's got a similar thing of going through a bunch of games one move at a time and using them to illustrate relatively basic chess principles, but the games are all Morphy so there's a general theme of simple, direct aggressive chess which I think is probably quite a good style to get used to.

Beyond that I don't think a book of "positional chess" (eg Reassess Your Chess) is going to be that helpful at that point. The sort of imbalances and techniques that these books talk about are going to be fairly subtle and basically not relevant if you or your opponent is still giving away pieces or hanging basic tactics.

In terms of getting better at basic tactics - one thing to do is just play slower chess - maybe shift down from blitz to rapid - and really force yourself to blunder check moves - "Have I hung a piece? What is my opponent going to do next?". Over time it should hopefully become instinctive, and you'll find that your blitz will improve too.

@mrbasso said in #28:

Of course one of your main problems is tactics.
Books might not help much. Practice is better for most players.

Do all of these basic puzzles! : stepchess.com/tactic

Really good at tactics you can only get with things like CT-Art but this is mostly too advanced for you.

I honestly don't see how my problem is tactics. As I said, if I don't happen to blunder a piece, my mistakes - according to the engine - happen at the late opening/early midgame, basically when you are done developing your pieces. I simply don't know what to do next, and I usually make a mistake despite this mistake not blundering any of my pieces. So it's a positional problem, right?