Would You Recommend How to Reassess Your Chess by Silman?

Strategy is essentially superfluous, isn't it?  Just learn tactics and endgames (what I call "factual positions" ***.  The more factual positions you know and can solve, the more ways you will be able to envision them and calculate a way of getting there before your opponent realizes how you are duping him.  

"Strategy" is just an attempt to shortcut this process of learning the facts in an attempt to dumb it down for the masses (oh yeah, control squares with my bishop, yippee). 

The "strategic" principles are thoroughly embodied within complex tactics and endgames; these can be verified by powerful engines or extensive human GM analysis.     

*** copyright 2011 dannyhume, all rights reserved

My favorite part is how the strength of engines proves the absence of strategy.

1. In the first five to ten moves, my strategy is to develop my pieces faster than my opponent, seize more space, which translates into greater mobility and more tactical opportunities for me.

2. I want to control as many squares as possible, more so than ever before, now that my tactical vision has improved. I've got more attacking ideas, especially after reading Art of Attack in Chess by Vladimir Vukovic. I like his style. 

I definitely want to control squares, placing my bishops on open diagonals, aimed at the enemy king, putting the hurt on the f2/f7 square or the f-g-h pawn cover. Knock down that castle!

Perhaps this is where positional chess and tactical chess come together.

well ok then , just install an "engine" in your head and you won't need to study anything at all. Computers don't think in the sense that humans do, and the strength of computer chess is irrelevant to human chess play. Any car can go faster than a human can run, but does that mean the Olympics are useless?  The validity of positional chess does not need to be proven, that was done a long time ago and nothing a computer comes up with is going to change that. I don't know why you would bother to play chess if computers are your role models, because you will never match their brute force analysis power. If you want to believe there is no such thing as strategy in chess, that's your perogative, but you won't get too far along in your own unassisted playing strength. Sooner or later, you need a mental framework to channel your basic chess talent.

I know this sort of gets off the topic of mocking people and contributes somewhat to the "argument", but I'm going to post it anyway;

Old engines used pure calculation and got beat by humans. Then they started programming engines to evaluate positions using positional ideas, and they became incredibly strong.

I'm sorry - that was too much. As compensation;

(Apologies to the OP.)

I agree with milestogo2's post. It's strange to say that because computers beat humans, humans don't need to think strategically - both because it's an unequal battle (because of time necessary, etc.) and computers are supposed to perform better, and because of the algorithm of computer play.

The most common basis of computer thinking is the so-called Negamax search, which in short implements the principle that the worse your opponent's best reply is, the better your move is. This is a recursive algorythm and it can be set to search as deep as time allows, until it reaches a "static" position (defined by search depth), then the engine analyses it. After checking all the move "branches" that arise from a move, the engine comes up with a conclusion of the move's evaluation. But this method is useless (and chess computer programming) if there is a wrong position evaluation implemented to calculate the final position. The very same is fully truthful about humans, because the only difference is that computers are much more effective in time. Computers use a function that checks available material at the position, attack and defense values of the squares (how many times a square is being attacked or defended), pawns location (by files), pawn chains, doubled/tripled pawns, each piece's mobility (or controlled squares), undefended pieces / squares - all of those being strategical themes, awards them points according to preset schemes, sums them up and comes with an overall position evaluation, which is reflected in the move's evaluation.

It is strange what else could computers base their choice on (and humans too). If you understand "tactics" as "inevitable material gaining sequences" only but not as "position evaluation changing sequences", you are missing most of their essence.

I think that a very good book for players of all levels who are looking to truly get better is Irving Chernov's "Logical Chess". That book is a must buy and it's also a keeper. In every game Chernov gives an explanation on every move thus making the reader more in tune with the games themselves. The reader starts to think about the positions the way a master would, even though the reader might not be a master themselves. It's a hell of a lot more helpful than any Silman book out there.

Yes, Chernev' book is very good. It shows how to create winning situations by managing the positoin, instead of relying on a possible opponent's mistake to exploit. It's a good example of the importance of active and purposeful play.

In the spirit of this thread I guess I have to say this is just my opinion, but you are completely correct. Computers got incredibly strong by using a selective search. Incredibly strong human players use a selective search, not brute force calculation. The selective search is based on strategy and pattern recognition. Chess is a lot about knowing how to put your pieces on the right squares which creates opportunities for tactics. As I side note Spassky said Korchnoi opens his games by putting his pieces on the wrong squares, then in the middle game he repositions them to the right squares! Korchnoi has proven he is very good at doing this!

Tactics is about literally seeing what's going to happen. Strategy is making an educated judgment, or even, a guess about what is going to happen. You have to balance judgment and calculation as a human, as that's the only practical way to go -- we can't afford to spend a half hour calculating a six move variation where due to our bad judgment it turns out that a different move is actually much better, and that we have wasted our time. Computers can.

The two things are different on some level yet are constantly working with each other, where tactics helps strategy, or vice versa. So neither are useless. But Tactics are more fundamental: being good at tactics means that you can literally be outplayed by 40 moves and just wait for a random opportunity which is very likely to come; you will succeed extremely well with that at amateur level, especially below 2000.

Yeah, I'm very serious. Perhaps you think it sounds pessimistic (though it's not trying to be), but it makes sense to me.

For example: You see a strong white knight on d5. A strategist says it's good because, since it has a lot of influence, it will be easier to play actively. A computer will say it's good because 8 moves later it wins material. The strategist doesn't have to know if it wins material 8 moves later, he just uses his common sense to conjecture that it will lead to good things.

Just to show you how incredibly baseless your judgment is, in the hopes that you make it less so in the future: http://www.chess.com/echess/game.html?id=46902750

I lost this game because I'm too positional. I built up a good position but simply couldn't convert it.

I like how a thread about Silman's books generate so much posts lol.

You can study all of the strategy you want. If you know more "factual positions" and how to solve them, you are better off than if you didn't.   A 2000-rated player would eat me alive and then say "see how you need strategy and your way is wrong", but then some super-GM would eat them alive likewise...what does it prove?  The more you know, the clearer and faster your pattern recognition and logic, the better off you are.  You can't "intuit" certain endgames and many "advantageous" lines have been overturned by computer analysis...don't many computer programs calculate backwards from winning endgame positions?  There are many developing moves that appear safe but fall for traps, and positionally biased people call them "tricks" or "cheapos", yet the whole goal of chess is to "trick" or "cheapo" your opponent as fast as possible.  You can learn the general principles for when you don't recognize any pattern and need some guidance on what to do next, but those decisions have to withstand tactical/factual/analytical scrutiny  and are an acknowledgement of one's ignorance of the position.  GM Soltis says 99% of chess is not tactics, it is calculation.

I am not anti-Silman for being anti-Silman's sake and I will read what he has to say (I believe there are some pearls if you listen to stronger players even if they can't clearly explain why they are so much better or what they do more effectively), but if you have deficiencies in tactics/endgames/"facts" ("strategy" is the attempt to get to the "facts"), then by trying to learn "positional play", you are playing "hope chess", e.g.- you are hoping that if you make certain types of moves, your opponent will make slightly worse ones and you will eventually be able to win. 

If you know the "facts", your "strategy" will be to try to move your army to an achievable fact...isn't that what "creating a fantasy position" (and calculating your way there) really is? 

 I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

I could say the same thing for the anti Silman thugs, stop shovelling  your stuff down our throat with you argument and haven't you got better thing to do like play some chess ?  

'quarki is my friend. He's not a troll, and he is a very smart kid. So lay off him.