I know I am in a very powerful position at the board, I can post some games with examples from my last couple seasons later certainly, and will also post some of my best games (wins and losses, any game is a besty so long as you learn!) to give you an idea how it fits together.

First off, I'd say we're heading strongly in the direction of a new topic, of general adult improvement, and psychology's role in chess I might make a new thread later. Secondly, the middlegame is collectively how to describe a great many positions, hence my problem: it's not like players who understand some things very deeply and avoid other territory, I literally have no base from which to build, because I never saw things easily and neglected to learn technique and middlegame ideas in more depth than I saw I needed at the time I was a junior. Which isn't to denigrate the role of what I've learned so far

But the psychology of chess, if you might agree, would be covered in books, such as Think Like a Grandmaster, to some degree at least. I've tried one other book, How to Choose a Chess Move [Soltis] which utterly stuffed my brain up after reading, and I'm certain that such problems are not the root. Ultimately, I strive for calculation and intuition in my analysis. I'm only human so I can never get there 100% of the time, but when I get anywhere near form, the combination of good moves calculation, and verbal reasoning attained mainly from constant development of ideas and self-challenging, and Bill Hartston's excellent Teach yourself Better Chess, leads me into perfectly good ideas and moves. I see it as more of a technical problem-often during a post-mortem I'll see I played a perfectly solid move by Fritz, it's then simply the case that I get ideas in an imprecise order, and that when I get to making the most of my advantages once I can accrue no more (or I can but don't see it ), I lose the plot. I'll take your point on board about the merits of Simple Chess

I should also mention as earlier, for clarification, that I've had 5 or 6 years since my last leap, and know that I'm due: one of the games I'm gonna post later shows the start of a 9-game unbeaten run when I was at my most consistent for 6 seasons. My last leap came from the then ELO ratings, before conversion change, of 1040 to 1456, or 55-->107 ECF (ECF grades only go upto about 300 translating Anand etc), so once everything clicks, I know I'm on for at least a jump from now ~1785 to perhaps even 1950 and beyond! I'll certainly bear in mind your pattern recognition suggestion, certainly I never considered blitz forming such vast quantities of games-one question; did you encounter pretty much every ECO code going or limit yourself to those around and in your repertoire?

The thing about Informants were that they were the best or at least most interesting games played by masters and grandmasters over the time period covered as chosen by the editors (who did a good job of choosing). When I studied them I did pay extra attention to the games in my repertoire but I did tend to give at least a quick look at all of the games.

Also we often would look at a game or two with the combined resources of the top players on our chess team which included two senior masters, and later two or three master strength players. Sometimes we spent four or five hours thoroughly analysing one game with one player writing down the candidate moves and analysis conclusions on an analysis type pad used for bookkeeping.

Cool I have some Chess mags which I can riffle through for good games, and perhaps select some recent Kramnik WCC match games-I particularly admire his style. Anyone who can defuse Kasparov gets me thumbs up!

I'm just posting some example games in a new thread, any particular things you wanna see to get a better idea of my play?

I played every game, even the openings I never used. And let me tell you, I got sick of playing over all those games! But I kept track of the percentage of correct guesses and when I saw it going up from an initial 15-20% to over 60% it kept me encouraged to keep plugging away.

I think there are also psychological factors involved because from what I can tell masters think differently than average players, but that's another thread.

Indeed; masters have less to think about, but what they DO consider, is far more precise and well-versed than our thoughts. Because (and in my particular case exceptionally so) we are less fluent in our play, we have to eliminate more moves manually. That said, it's amazing how even a small gap in grade can lead to big differences. A few years ago in the final round of the county championship 2nd section, my opponent was amazed afterwards to hear me rattle off some variations I'd calculated at a particularly tactical time. The game before, I'd missed 3 (!!) draws by various methods to put myself out of the running, I might put that one up. I do like this idea of percentage count too And having a million game databse certainly makes a nice job of choosing games!

There was a discussion about middlegame books a while back on the chesspub forums that might have some good info:

ChessPub Forum - Books on the middlegame?

Probably it can already be seen but just to point out I posted 7 games in another thread for dissection I'm probably going to take on the 'hundreds of games test' idea, and try to work very diligently through Deadly Chess Tactician, I've always found it heavy going to get into any one single game, but if I take what I see as read, then the volume of repetitive example of attack postures in sacrifice will help; I might not even need AoA!

One of the best articles of advice on improvement I’ve ever read is here:
Chessville - Editorials - Rose's Rants, by Tom Rose

Master thinking:
http://www.cogsci.northwestern.edu/c...s/paper402.pdf
Chessville - The Psychology of Chess Skill - by J. Corey Butler, PhD

A lot of what a master has over the non master is pattern recognition. They might well have more study in a particular position but are almost always more experienced in that position in game play, often tournament play.

I understand your desire to improve quickly. I have had those desires myself. I think the best thing you can do is to keep doing what you are doing and perhaps being more patient with yourself. You will crack 2000 soon enough.

Just to give you a resolution to the thread; I bought Art of Attack, and took out the first part of Middlegame from the library, so will plough through these before making any further middlegame book purchases