My coach does not like Jeremy Silman...

I have the solution. Change coaches! I am newly listed

Check out my Youtube channel

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwjjBT5pHEAaXl_hNblli1w

Look it sounds to me that your coach just thinks that everybody just needs to work hard. But every person is different. Some people want to be spoon fed or even need it even if they have talent for the game. I personally have a simular approach to Silman. I think I can define any of my teachings into simple principles that can be used for all kinds of different situations. A good caoch can sppon feed you while helping you understand why and then and this is the hardest part. Get you to apply it in your own games until you can see how it is helping your game get better.

Why work hard whn you can work smart?

I don't like Jeremy Silman either.

Sorry, had to do it.  No idea who Jeremy Silman is!

I bought a copy of Silman's 1st edition (then new!) of How to Reassess Your Chess for each OTB rated member of the high school team I coached and they improved; a lot, and I've had a soft spot in my heart for Silman since.

BUT...from now on I'd check with your coach first. It may be that Silman's system of imbalances or how he evaluates them conflicts with your coach's system.  My classical piano teacher, a virtuosa college piano dept. head, wants me to play pieces written for piano only exactly as Mozart, Chopin, Bach, Beethoven etc. wrote them. So I don't get to play a lot of beautiful music originally written for other instruments like Pachelbel's Canon in D.  But I'm sold on the fact she knows what she's doing and that I'll progress better following her instructions, so I do what she says. 

Okay but a virtuaosa like that is equivalant to a GM and higher... a CM... lol I am just saying

When I was roughly 1000, the three books that made the most difference for me were Chess Praxis (Nimzowitsch), Zurich 1953 (Bronstein), and From the Middlegame to the Endgame (Mednis). These books got me to the 1300-1400 level -- quickly.

I don't recommend Silman's books. How to Reassess Your Chess (3rd edition) made me play worse when I studied it in the late 90s (I was in the 1400-1600 range then). I cannot recall another book that made my play go backwards and didn't teach me how to understand chess, but instead taught me an unnatural thinking process. The Amateur's Mind I found amusing but useless.

When I was already 1900+, I read Silman's Endgame Course. Decent, but not great, and incredibly overrated. How to Play the Chess Endings (Znosko-Borovsky) and A Guide to Chess Endings (Euwe and Hooper), which I read in earlier years, were infinitely more helpful to me. They were boring (especially Euwe and Hooper), but I wanted to get better at chess and was not interested in entertainment. Of course, this is leaving aside Endgame Strategy (Shereshevsky), which is the masterpiece of strategic endgames. In later years I have become very fond of the new edition of Basic Chess Endings (Fine, edited by Benko).

Judgment and Planning in Chess (Euwe) and Simple Chess (Stean) are my favorite middlegame books. I have re-read each of them many times.

I will say that I have perhaps spent too much of my career studying openings. That said, I consider The Sharpest Sicilian (Georgiev and Kolev) to be the best opening book I have ever read. Khalifman's Openings for White According to Anand and Openings for Black According to Karpov are also superb. Just the right mix of variations and terse, to-the-point, instructive comments! I consider the Quality Chess opening books to be closer to reference materials than reading materials, though of course they are outstanding for this purpose.

I'm a huge fan of Chess Stars' books.

And add me to the list of people who find most of Igor Smirnov's courses to be thought-provoking and worthwhile.

"... Just because a book contains lots of information that you don’t know, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be extremely helpful in making you better at this point in your chess development. ..." - Dan Heisman (2001)

"... The books that are most highly thought of are not necessarily the most useful. Go with those that you find to be readable. ..." - GM Nigel Davies (2010)

"... If it’s instruction, you look for an author that addresses players at your level (buying something that’s too advanced won’t help you at all). This means that a classic book that is revered by many people might not be useful for you. ..." - IM Jeremy Silman (2015)
https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-best-chess-books-ever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAdMS8RzcVs

well said!

"Jeremy Silman's HOW TO REASSESS YOUR CHESS is an example of a good book which explains many important ideas in clear terms." - GM John Nunn (2006)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708095832/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review769.pdf
Silman: The Amateur's Mind
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708094419/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/ammind.pdf
Silman's Complete Endgame Course
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708103149/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review594.pdf

"... Silman’s Complete Endgame Course ... has already caught on with the average player in a big way, confirming Silman's status as the king of instructional writers. ..." - IM John Watson (2007)

http://theweekinchess.com/john-watson-reviews/theres-an-end-to-it-all

What's a good supplement to go along Silman's Endgame Course for players at around USCF/FIDE 1200-1600?  Was hoping this book would be all I need for endgame study, but sounds as though maybe it's not as complete as had hoped.  Am not likely to reach beyond this rating range, in fact there's a good possibility will never see 1600 even if had loads of study time which don't and probably never will.  

Thanks to everyone who's posted here, have seen some pretty helpful nuggets of chess wisdom. 

Various endgame study possibilities discussed at:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708105702/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review645.pdf

https://www.newinchess.com/media/wysiwyg/product_pdf/9026.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708234309/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review704.pdf
http://www.gambitbooks.com/pdfs/Understanding_Chess_Endgames.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708101138/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review373.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708095144/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review701.pdf
https://www.chess.com/article/view/book-review-winning-chess-endings

https://web.archive.org/web/20140708233815/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review399.pdf

http://www.gambitbooks.com/pdfs/Fundamental_Chess_Endings.pdf
http://www.chess.com/article/view/quotendgame-strategyquot-by-mikhail-shereshevsky

http://theweekinchess.com/john-watson-reviews/endings-endings-endings
http://theweekinchess.com/john-watson-reviews/the-end-game-comes-before-we-know-it
http://theweekinchess.com/john-watson-reviews/theres-an-end-to-it-all

"... Just because a book contains lots of information that you don’t know, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be extremely helpful in making you better at this point in your chess development. ..." - Dan Heisman (2001)

https://web.archive.org/web/20140626180930/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman06.pdf
"... The books that are most highly thought of are not necessarily the most useful. Go with those that you find to be readable. ..." - GM Nigel Davies (2010)
"... If it’s instruction, you look for an author that addresses players at your level (buying something that’s too advanced won’t help you at all). This means that a classic book that is revered by many people might not be useful for you. ..." - IM Jeremy Silman (2015)
https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-best-chess-books-ever

In the beginning of Averbakh's Chess Endings Essential Knowledge, I found:
"I conceived the idea of writing a popular booklet devoted to the endgame back in the early 1950s, when I was working on an encyclopaedic reference work intended for players of high standard. Out of the mass of information on the endgame, I thought it was important to select the minimum which any chess enthusiast should know in order to handle competently the concluding phase of the game. It turned out that it was not necessary to know such a great deal."

@kindaspongey:

The reviewers you quote (Nunn, Watson, Silman, less so with Donaldson, have no interest whatsoever in reading Heisman) all have something particular in their writing style that I hate, and that is: TOO MUCH EXTRA UNNECESSARY FLUFF. They don't get to the point. That extra crap is distracting and detracts from understanding.

What is it with these "popular" authors whose first language is English? Get to the damn point! I'm not saying one has to read Nimzowitsch, Dvoretsky, or Aagaard (the spiritual successor to Dvoretsky: great stuff, English language, but really challenging), but come on.

To @jengaias' point: don't let these guys talk you out of reading chess books filled with CHESS content. I have never read Keres' endgame book, but I'm sure it is excellent. I would not expect anything less from such a legend.

Another great endgame book is Chess School 4 by Sarhan Guliev. It doesn't have words! Only variations and symbols. And yet it is one of the very best endgame books out there because it is so "clean" and lets the chess do the talking. ALL the important stuff is in there.

Chess School books are awesome.

Fluffy or not, I think the reviewers provide helpful information about the books.

For those that care: I believe that there are both algebraic (1 e4 e5) and descriptive (1 P-K4 P-K4) versions of the book.

Thanks for the  suggestions!  Keres' Practical Chess Endings sounds like a good place look after having worked through Silman's book (assumed Dvoretsky would be beyond me).  

And Silman does not like ur coach

imagine the day Silman sees this 

He is a IM. If he reports to chess.com then your thread will be locked with a warning.DISCLAIMER:CHESS.COM gives HIGH RESPECT TO Titled players whether they are rated 1000 or 3000.