Would You Recommend How to Reassess Your Chess by Silman?

Yes, I did. I got a signed edition of it for my husband's (stats_man on here) birthday.

I got The Amateur's Mind for myself. I've managed to read a whole four pages of it so far. Procrastination.

I would study the classics from the world champions, like Lasker's Manual of Chess or Capa's chess fundamentals before spending a lot of time and money on books from IMs. Although there are many excellent books from IMs.

Thanks for the advice. I'll keep it in mind.

"Procrastination."  join the club ! 

A fault I need to work more on overcoming. But I keep putting it off.

I just brought silman's complete endgame course SUPERB !! same silman style the man is a great teacher of this game !  

oh yes. my practical experience matches with many of your recommendations. i started reading 'how to reassess your chess' and stopped. why ? i found it too hard. then i started 'ameteurs mind' . i am currently studying it. good book.

The simple answer is yes. It still helps me improve by going back and re-reading the examples/miniatures. Great overall for intermediate players.

I recommend both "Reassess Your Chess" (I'm reading the 4th edition) and "Test Your Positional Play" by Robert Bellin and Pietro Ponzetto.

Be careful not to dwell on them too much when playing rapid though... you tend to think deep (and long) about your position and suddenly you have 2 minutes on the clock while your opponent has 8.

"How to Reassess Your Chess, 4th Edition was designed for players in the 1400 to 2100 range." - IM Jeremy Silman (2010)

Personally, I feel that the ability to break a complex subject down into bite-sized bits and communicate them effectively is more important than the actual playing strength of the author. There are a lot of factors that go into determining a person's playing strength, and only a few of those factors are relevant to effective written communication. Naturally, I'm not suggesting that you should read books written by 1200 players... but it seems to me that the difference between a 2400 player and a 2600 player is less important than the difference between an effective writer and a poor writer.

Has NM BMcC333 been here since 2012?

Yes, last on line 10 hours ago.

There seems to be a lot of negative opinions about Silman's books, especially from strong players.

I've never really understood why, but then I'm not a strong player.

It's not like he churns out squillions of books like Schiller used to.

I'm not a titled player, but I'm slightly above Silman's intended strength range. For what it's worth, I do think some of the criticism levelled at Silman definitely is merited. (One obvious point is is tendency towards unnecessary verbosity.) However, I also think that he does have some very good points and concepts which are useful for lower-rated players. I'm not saying it's a silver bullet for improvement, and considering the level of difficulty of some of the material/exercize positions he seems to have thrown at some of his pupils when coaching, I get the impression that Silman sometimes has difficulty in gauging the level suitabile for his audience. (He seems to be asking to players with an online rating below 1000 to perform rather abstract positional evaluations, for instance.)

That said, I think the concept of focusing on imbalances is a good teaching method for lower rated players, not least because it does help to identify one's own weaknesses as players. I found that helpful for my own game, and Tal did something similar throughout his career. It wasn't unusual for him to go over material well below his level. There's nothing wrong with repeating the basics, because you may have missed something! (This goes against much advice I've read about training: focus your precious training time, don't be afraid of skipping parts you know already. This atrociously bad piece of advice is based on the obvious fallacy that each player knows exactly within him- or herself what he/she knows. If there's one thing that is dead certain about us duffers, it's that we regularly think we're better than we are. We're most definitely not.)

However, Silman has a tendency to become overly categorical: 'If you can't find the right move in a specific position when you're playing, search harder!' In my view, this is wrong on many levels. First of all, this is based on the assumption that the player (who may not be very strong) has evaluated the position correctly, thinking he/she stands better/clearly better. This may not be the case, it may just be equal or even slightly worse. Secondly, there's something to be said for Karpov's method of keeping making moves, sometimes contenting yourself with the second best alternative, because what's the point of spending half an hour over a move if you later on just blunder in time-trouble. (Instead, if you feel that there were critical moments where you could have played differently, go back over the game afterwards, and spend time on the position in the quiet of your study - that will help development, too. This becomes ever more important these days when we play with shorter time controls.) Another thing that Silman does is to urge his pupils to not hesitate in their evaluations. However, if there's one thing I've noticed when watching super grandmasters analyzing, it's that they're most definitely not cocksure! (One specific post-mortem which stuck in my mind was a game between Julian Hodgson and Mickey Adams: 'Mmm...myes...', 'Perhaps...', 'Yes, possibly...', 'I'm not sure', and 'I don't know' was the most common utterances by both players.)

In short, there may be a certain amount of 'unlearning' to be done after improvement by Silman.

Thanks for the response BTC.

I've got a few books on strategy - of the books you are familiar with, which do you think are worth reading and in which order should they be read:

Pachman - Complete Chess Strategy (3 volumes)

Ed Lasker - Chess Strategy (I think you recommended I buy that one - haven't started it yet!)

Seirawan - Winning Chess Strategies (I've read most of this)

Euwe and Meiden - Chess Master v Amateur (currently reading this)

Bronstein - Zurich 1953

Euwe and Meiden - Road to Chess Mastery

Lev Alburt - Chess Strategy for the Tournament Player

Chernev - Most Instructive Games ever played

Silman - Amateur's Mind

Silman - HTRYC 3rd editions

I've got too many chess books. I expect I'll buy some more soon!

Too many books - I know the feeling!

(I don't know much about Seirawan and Alburt, so will leave them aside for now.) I'd go with the two Euwe & Meiden books first, followed by Chernev. Of the specific strategy books, I'd probably read Pachman first even though it's more advanced than Lasker. (I should also point out that, despite it's name, 'Chess Strategy' is also intended to take a newcomer to the game to at least the intermediate level. Apart from middle-games and strategy in general, he also discusses endgame play and opening play as well as presenting a number of highly instructive classic games). Have a look at them both, and see which one seems most suitable to you at this point in time. Regardless of the order in which you read them, I would re-read Pachman more than once (he's illustrating all concepts with a number of examples, and as you improve you'll understand the more advanced concepts better on a second or third reading). Then I would read Bronstein and would then use Silman's books as a way of trying to identify my weaknesses, so that I can then specifically work on them.

If you don't find it too confusing, you should also try to read Lasker, Pachman and Silman concurrently with the Euwe & Meiden, Chernev and Bronstein, since the latter are game collections, where the authors illustrate or discuss various themes and concepts.

I’m a 1088 FIDE and that book is the best Chess book I ever read.

Thanks BTC. So I'll have one strategy book and one games collection book on the go at all times.

A lot of strong players rave about the Pachman series, including Pfren.

Which book is?

Silman is not wordy, but he does add a couple jokes to his books(who wants to read a book where the author madly rambles on about alien concepts?). After the ‘under 1000’ player is done with tactics, you MUST tell him about positional stuff (like in my case) - there’s no tactics left over, and that’s how he moves further up the rating ladder.

Even if it’s equal or worse for him, that does not mean he can decide not to find the right move.

He doesn’t mean to play a move ten nano seconds after it catches your eye. He doesn’t want you to keep thinking ,’Mmm...Myes’ or ,’Perhaps...’ and stuff. Besides, do you think Julian Hodgson or Michael Adams were coached by Silman?