Anyone found Silman's books (excluding endgame) detrimental to their chess?

Had the 2 books in the past ( How to... and The Amateur's Mind)-- got rid of them; just recently bought them again (4th edition HTRYC) and it seems my turn-based games are going down the drain! I am suddenly in a slump; every game is now seemingly difficult to navigate and/or win?  This happen to anyone else?

It's very common for new knowledge to cause a disruption of your thinking process until it has been integrated.  Don't believe it has anything to do with Silman's work.

Especially if you read something cover to cover without playing any games, his (or any book) would hurt your results in the short term.  As always it's important to keep playing games and analysing them.

The info in Silman's books is not novel, the books present well known material, some ideas as old as a hundred years.  What's novel is the format, like his system of imbalances, which tries to make these ubiquitous ideas more accessible to amateur players.

Instead of getting rid of them send them to me please...

"How to reassess your chess" is actually a very bad book.

In about 500  pages it has more than 50 of Silman's games and less than 5 from players like Petrosian , Botvinik , Tal ,Smyslov , Keres and others.

Silman tries to teach you chess with examples from games played on the Internet from players called "Indiana Jones" and other hilarious names.The result?No more than 3 examples for backward pawn(and not even the best), no more than 3 examples for isolated pawn , nothing for Minority attack although the writer claims that will make you an expert in imbalancies(let me remind you that the "Karlsbad pawn structure" ,as it's called the pawn structure that occurs on Queen's Gambite declined Exchange Variation or in Caro Kan exchange variation , is one of the most typical examples of imbalance in chess)

The only good about the book is the need it creates to find a serious book for serious study.
 

Try "Complete chess strategy" by Ludek Pachman my friend.Every topic is fully explained and the best games ever played have been used as examples.In the 3 books of Pachman you will find games played by all the great masters of chess and not the Jedi masters like Darth Vader , Yoda and Luke Skywalker.Pachman's books though remain very simple and easy to understand for any level and they are recomended for anyone interested in serious study.

Fortunately enough for him Ludek Pachman passed away some nine years ago, and so he isn't brutally offended by the comparison of his monumental classic to pulp fiction books.

I didn't make a comparison Pfren.I actually tried exactly the opposite , to point out that there is  no comparison.

I know that. The comparison has been made in other threads several times, and Pachman has been dismissed as "boring". And no, the dismissal wasn't made by those people who drop a couple of pawns (or pieces, whatever comes first), they call it "My Gambit" and then boast about "pwning" their opponent, who eventually blundered his king in one move. These people do not read middlegame, or endgame books, they are useless to them, since their tactical genius allow them winning all games within 17 moves maximum. It was made by people who consider themselves having a serious attitude towards chess study.

Notice also that the first two "Reassess" editions weren't bad (greatly plagiarizing Pachmann, but not bad). The last two editions have deteriorated exponentially, which makes me believe that the author gave up on writing his "reference book", and he rather concentrated on fattening his bank account.

Well luckily I have a copy of Pachmans book and silmans book and they do seem to be copied. I was suspicious on a game that his write was exactly the same in chessbase 11 game that was annotated as well. Pachman is cheaper too.

I've watched most of these-- his eagerness to teach is impressive, but he has way too much idol worship when it comes to Silman and his books.

Plus, some of the games he plays thru are pretty bad-- your opponent misses mate in one on your king for several moves? That's bizarre!

Plain, simple Euro-centric, Anti-American hogwash.

You don't get to say one book sucks, a second one is great, and then that the first one is copied from the second.  It's completely illogical, and your bias shows through loud and clear.

Sounds like sour grapes by a teacher who hasn't had nearly as much success as Silman.

Anti-American?  Jeeze, that's a stretch....

Incidentally, I have Reassess 4th edition and didn't particularly care for it.  I can't say enough good things about Silman's endgame book though.

There's a "slight" difference between succesfully plagiarizing another man's work, and making a commercial by-product full of nonsense.

The first two editions of Reassessing was some sort-of-reasonable adaptation of a couple of the strategical themes presented in Pachman's book, but the last two editions is pulp exclusively aimed at naive readers.

I do believe that not all american readers are naive- do you object?

His endgame book is very good though. Not of the caliber of Shereshevsky's endgame books, or the definitive work by Dvoretsky, but still good enough, and well recommendable.

What specific themes in his HTRYC book do you not agree with?

I specifically didn't care for the planning process presented (fantasy positions etc.).  With no assurance of finding a successful plan to reach your "fantasy position" I find it highly time intensive and risky.

But chess isn't about knowing which moves to select in a given position, it's about being able to identify common patterns/features of a position. Most of his examples are from games anyway.

I disagree.  Chess is exactly about knowing which moves to select in a given position.  The common patterns and themes are just a means to that end.

Did you really not know what I meant there?

It's not about knowing what to play in the exact positions he gives in his books.