Silman's mastering chess imbalances book's

Hello chess fan's I'm curious how many chess players have read his book's and apply it's teaching too your games.....

Got it and its a great book for players of many levels.

On one hand, Silman helped me gain a little understanding out of chess.  The problem with chess is that it is a very complex subject and it is taught very poorly overall. 

My problem with Silman is that even though he explains each Imbalance very well, he does a poor job of talking about their creation and how to actually plan with them.  For example, he talks about how rooks belong on open files.  Completely true.  But he doesn't tell you that a file is opened by placing a rook on a file behind one of your pawns, then placing a piece on the a square which is protected by that pawn.  This way when the piece is captured you capture back with your pawn, then your rook is already placed on an open file.  Nor does he tell you how to contest an open file with better minor pieces.  And even though he tells you that rooks belong on the 7th rank, he doesn't really tell you that that is the whole point of putting the rook on the file, to get it to the 7th rank. 

And see, now you have a plan:

• Choose a file to open which has one of your pawns on it.
• Place a piece on a square protected by the pawn.
• Allow it to be exchanged so you can recapture with the pawn.
• Your rook is now on an open file.
• Use minor pieces to contest entry squares allowing...
• ...you to place your rook on the 7th rank.

Silman doesn't go over this very well.

I have found a better book to be Simple Chess by Michael Stean.  It talks about things like this.  Do everything you can to master that book.  Then when you are done, read Giants of Strategy by Neil Mcdonald.  It goes even deeper into positional play.  Then read My System by Nimzowitsch.  And because Nimzowitsch is hard to read because it was written in the 20s, go back and re-read Giants of Strategy.  Then Read Silman as a refresher course and see how the imbalances are related to each other.

Also there is the issue of tactics.  It is completely true that pieces must be in the right position to pull of a tactic.  But if you aren't good at tactics, they will completely kill your beautiful positon if you fall for one.  Also, a good understanding of tatics will help you achieve better positions because you will see a positional idea like an open file for your rook, but there are no entry squares.  Yet you see that if your opponent takes the rook on one of those squares he will fall for a tactic.  So you place the rook on the entry square you want.  He either misses the tactic and takes the rook, or sees the tactic and you achieve a better positon for your rook.

To do this, the best thing I have heard is to go into tactics trainer set it on a 400-1300 problem rating and practice all the motiffs in it until you can solve  puzzles in 15 seconds.  The goal is to memorize tatical motiffs like, pins, forks etc. like they are multiplication tables over the board.

If you do this, you will get a lot better.

With all of this said, his endgame course book is really good.  It helped me a lot.

Really great explanation. Also, appreciate your suggestions on reading other book to cover the missing parts. Often reading a new chess theory makes me nod, but the details of how to execute it in your own games is imp.