Studying anything above your level leads to your getting worse. Chess is pretty brutal in punishing arrogance. It takes humility to improve.
It might not be arrogance. A lot of people go around urging people to read this or that without paying much attention to the level of the person who will be doing the reading. It is very easy for a beginner to be a victim of that sort of behavior.
Seeing that you have a relatively low rating, I appreciate your frustration with a book that has grown from about a 200 page 1st Edition that was required reading for the high school team I coached to a monstrous 658 page work that is not focused on things weaker players need to learn first and gets too deep into some things where those players would be better off moving on to other things. Some key things that were highlighted in the first edition are now buried among lots of other things, like the how the rank a Knight is on affects it's strength.
But please don't assume you know enough about chess to say Silman is wrong. The information is on target and benefited the under 2000-rated players I know who have studied the book, including myself.
When I coached a high school chess team in the '90's and '00's, I personally bought copies of the first edition of Silman's How to Reassess Your Chess for EVERY one of my OTB players, gave them specific page assignments to STUDY, not just read, and quizzed them individually on what they studied. We won the 3rd, 4th, and 5th place team trophies in the State Scholastic Championship in three consecutive years and won our County Chess Championship each of those years in the toughest county: we had FOUR of the top 10 teams in the state each year.
The current 4th Edition, a monstrous 658 pages compared to about 200 pages for the 1st Edition, is something I might not give a high school team today because it's now so extensive it's confusing to anyone not committed to intense study of the book.
But it's STILL a book that makes great sense.
Even if you don't evaluate using Silman's system of Imbalances the way he does, you're still going to look at Pawn Structure, Space, File Control, Superior Minor Piece (Knight Outposts and Rank, Good vs Bad Bishops, and so on), etc.
Would you recommend buying the 1st edition instead of the fourth edition? What is your opinion on the second or third editions? Or your opinion on his John Everyman story? What is your OTB rating?
how do i get better
how do i get better
idk wesleyn1 but your profile picture looks like you are a ripped man. apply the same discipline to chess as you do to making your body appealing for the ladies.
… I don't see him as arrogant; he simply has no patience for those who make ridiculous unsupported claims. He is very helpful to people who are genuinely trying to learn, even when they make mistakes. ...
The thing about chess is that, with a low rating, one can still get to a point where one can reliably defeat lots of people. In such a position, it is very easy to suffer from the illusion that one is already an authority. Some of these people require strong corrective action, but some only need gentle prodding.
how do i get better
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/for-beginners/help-me-im-sucking
Rating, rating, rating, blah, blah, blah.
What the rating don't tell... is the games lost to chronic lag, to disconnect, to having a sh1t IP connection... the games stolen by patzer who are 15 or 20 points crushed... yet premove their king a dozen clicks to clock the win.
Lion lose a game like so yesterday, by 0.1sec?!
Only have this account a month, and part work 3 jobs?!
How many decades have sillman and pfren been playing...
With that context... 23k is not very special?
Having a fairly low rating... does not mean low intelligence...
And remember please... many of we patzers can only play 2hrs per day, or less.
MickinMD … Would you recommend buying the 1st edition instead of the fourth edition? What is your opinion on the second or third editions? ...
I think the first thing is to note this:
"How to Reassess Your Chess, 4th Edition was designed for players in the 1400 to 2100 range." - IM Jeremy Silman (2010)
Since you seem to be in the right range, I would say that the next step is to look at available online samples:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708095832/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review769.pdf
https://www.silmanjamespress.com/shop/chess/how-to-reassess-your-chess-4th-edition/
If, for some reason, you don't like them, you could try an earlier (and cheaper) edition, but I think the best guess is that you would be happier with a different author.
Rating, rating, rating, blah, blah, blah. ...
Only have this account a month, and part work 3 jobs?!
How many decades have sillman and pfren been playing...
… Having a fairly low rating... does not mean low intelligence...
And remember please... many of we patzers can only play 2hrs per day, or less.
I agree with you that public criticism is sometimes inappropriately harsh.
What about Lyudmil Tsevkov's «The secret of chess». Seems to be the new big thing.
What about Lyudmil Tsevkov's «The secret of chess». Seems to be the new big thing.
Yeah, I wonder what pfren thinks about Lyudmil Tsvetkov's The Secret of Chess.
I agree with Hendriks „Move First Think Later“. He claims that Silman talks too much. Variants and moves are important. The novel he writes to every move is plausible but doesn’t bring you very far. It is not false but it won’t help you in your next game.
I am talking of advanced players. Beginners are helped by any kind of practise and dealing with any chess content. So Silman is not completely useless for inexperienced players. Generally speaking I think he is overrated, especially in the US.
PS: nothing to do with his title/Elo. It’s his writing style.
He is overrated as an author, but that does not mean he preaches BS. If you do not like him as an author, try different authors who also write books on chess strategy and endgames.
... I wonder what pfren thinks about Lyudmil Tsvetkov's The Secret of Chess.
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/lyudmil-tsvetkov?page=28
thanks guys
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/for-beginners/help-me-im-sucking
All makes sense now
....
When I coached a high school chess team in the '90's and '00's, I personally bought copies of the first edition of Silman's How to Reassess Your Chess for EVERY one of my OTB players, gave them specific page assignments to STUDY, not just read, and quizzed them individually on what they studied.
Are you sure it was the first edition?
The expanded third edition came out in 1993.
1997?
Seeing that you have a relatively low rating, I appreciate your frustration with a book that has grown from about a 200 page 1st Edition that was required reading for the high school team I coached to a monstrous 658 page work that is not focused on things weaker players need to learn first and gets too deep into some things where those players would be better off moving on to other things. Some key things that were highlighted in the first edition are now buried among lots of other things, like the how the rank a Knight is on affects it's strength.
But please don't assume you know enough about chess to say Silman is wrong. The information is on target and benefited the under 2000-rated players I know who have studied the book, including myself.
When I coached a high school chess team in the '90's and '00's, I personally bought copies of the first edition of Silman's How to Reassess Your Chess for EVERY one of my OTB players, gave them specific page assignments to STUDY, not just read, and quizzed them individually on what they studied. We won the 3rd, 4th, and 5th place team trophies in the State Scholastic Championship in three consecutive years and won our County Chess Championship each of those years in the toughest county: we had FOUR of the top 10 teams in the state each year.
The current 4th Edition, a monstrous 658 pages compared to about 200 pages for the 1st Edition, is something I might not give a high school team today because it's now so extensive it's confusing to anyone not committed to intense study of the book.
But it's STILL a book that makes great sense.
Even if you don't evaluate using Silman's system of Imbalances the way he does, you're still going to look at Pawn Structure, Space, File Control, Superior Minor Piece (Knight Outposts and Rank, Good vs Bad Bishops, and so on), etc.