recommend a book on mid-game plan and board evaluation

Question

Could someone recommend a book on mid-game strategy please?

Things I am especially interested in are

1. Make plans (and foresee opponents plan and stop it)
2. Evaluate current position
3. Evaluate positions at the end of calculation

I guess 2 is somewhat blended in 1 and 3. My problem is that even though I may be able to do some evaluation for the current position, it's very hard to do the same at the end of each variation I calculated. So I'm looking for both a more involved way to analyse current position and also a quick way to roughly evaluate positions down the line. (Or maybe practice is the only way?)

Thanks.

(Not really interested in tactics as this is not my bottleneck)

Answer 1

"Reassess Your Chess" by Jeremy Silman is a modern classic on planning and imbalances.

Answer 2

"The Art of The Middle Game" by Keres and Kotov comes to mind. And an older book,"Strategy and Tactics in Chess" by Max Euwe, was long considered a classic in this area. Of course study always has to be combined with practice.

Answer 3

Two interesting books have been published recently that might be helpful to you:

• Winning Chess Manoeuvres
• Chess Structures - A Grandmaster Guide

Both concentrate on conveying "chess culture" - the knowledge how to handle certain typical positions and situations. This should be a good way to tackle your point 1.

Precise evaluation only comes with experience, practice and knowledge. Possibly you will have to train calculation instead of tactics.

Answer 4

Chess Strategy for Club Players, The Road to Positional Advantage by Herman Grooten is worth looking at.