Creative Chess Strategy

Rating:
Summary: Good book.
Review: I bought it on the third reading. It combined: Nimzowitch's (My system), Chernev's (The Most Instructive... and Logical Chess...), Jack Watson's (Secrets of Modern Chess), John Nunn's (Chess Move by Move), and John Love's (Positional Ideas...). Very good for people who want to get to class A. Better than Chernev's, Clearer than Nimzowitch's and Watson's, Simpler than Nunn's, a little deeper than Love's. So why not 5 stars? It did not make me buy on the very first reading and didn't get me thru class A yet. But we can wait...

Rating:
Summary: For Class A players and up
Review: I cant say much for the bozos who claim that chess books make great "bathtub" material or that they only buy a book after theyve read it 4 times somewhere, but this is basically a book of about 2 dozen complete and deeply annotated games organized by strategic themes, such as the "2 bishops" and the "isolated pawn" etc.
The author's notes are deep and the analysis seems competent.
I prefer this book to every other strategy book thats been released recently including Watson's books and the book titled Secrets of Positional Play- this book by Romero is better.

Rating:
Summary: For Class A players and up
Review: My chess tactics is weak; therefore I'm often banking on my experience with positional chess. Chernev's Most Instructive Chess Game ... is always my favorite. It taught me a lot about positional chess. One thing about Chernev's book, I could not understand its arrangement, not in chronological order, not in any particular themes, it's hard to remember (as a checklist during a game for: what can I do at this stage? what to do next if he exchanges his bishop for my outpost knight? etc.) Then I bought Nunn's Move-by-Move. Nunn's book is good and difficult. First his book is arranged in order of opening, middlegame and endgame; very nice. Second it's good because Nunn selected games of the "heavy-weight" players in the last 20 years or so. At this level the GMs try to carry out his plan while disrupting opponent's plan, so their plays are at very high level and sometimes very deceptive. That makes the book great and difficult (for my level).
Then one day I had to choose between Romero's Creative Chess Strategy and Marovic's Secrets of Positional Chess to buy. It's a hard choice because the words Secrets and Positional sounded so attractive. Now I am glad that I bought Romero's book. Together with other reviewers here and my own recollections, Marovic's book is more difficult and has many unfinished games. With comments like: +/=, =/=, -/=, at my level, it's like giving me the key (? ;-)) to space shuttle and ask me to fight around the earth a few rounds, bring it home safely and don't forget to look out the window to enjoy the view of the Grand Canyon and the Great Wall and Pyramid, and of course I have to pay for the trip and never have a flight training before. (I will buy Marovic's when I can understand it.)
Romero's theme arrangement is rather logical. The first three chapters are about Pawn structure, Space and Center; even it's hard to which order the Pawn Structure (more modern than other two) should appear. The next 4 chapters are about Bishop-pair, Blockade, IQP, and Control of Squares. Should the chapters about Blockade and IQP be chapters 4 and 5? Are they related to Pawn and Space? Not very clear because in the IQP chapter it mentions about the B-pair again and the Knight-pair (haven't read about this often since the games of Tchigorin and Reshevsky). And chapter 8 is about Attacking a Weak Center. Chapters 10 and 11 are about exchanging pieces and sacrifice. I think they should come after chapters 9 (Open and Semi-open files) and 12 (Knight-outpost and Rook-Knight Coordination). Exchange is when we want to improve our piece positions or to remove opponent's favorable pieces before or during an attack or defense; sacrifice is the last resort to achieve that goal, a minus in materials could spell disaster in a long run. Why doesn't chapter 13 (Dead Bishop) follow the B-pair chapter? Why is chapter 14 (Lack of Communication) away from chapters of Center and Blockade? Then after that is a chapter (15) about Attacking without Rules when a desperate win is needed or intuition suggests. At last, a chapter about positions where depending of taste, experience and skills, the GMs created. In those the normal considerations of mortal/low-level players like us fail to appreciate. Whichever side we take, we would lose to a player with 200-points higher.
Above is my personal opinion about Romero's book. He has very good reason to arrange it that way. I just hope I could create a checklist of what to do during the course of the game stage-by-stage.
Romero's is more logical than Chernev's, better for my level than Nunn's. It has lots of explanation which is very helpful, better than a bunch of variations and ended with +, -, =, which are comprehensible to me.
Correction: it's a 5 star book.