Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I have a lot to thank Silman for., 21 May 2005
You have probably heard about Silman's books. He hasn't written a lot of books, but those he has written are gems. Fortunately for me I was recommended to study this book by a friend at about the right time in my chess learning - after a few months of concentrating just on tactics (for which Seirawan's 'Winning Chess Tactics' and Reinfeld's '1001 Winning Combos' are an ideal pair) - you start discovering things for yourself like how strong a concept the intiative - not just being a series of forced checking moves but something deeper - is, and of how stronger players seem sometimes to just make placing moves, rather than moves with an obvious tactical purpose. When discovering these concepts for myself in practice I felt like I was going up a level, and at this point The Amateur's Mind is excellent. This book is so enlightening and comprehensive for 'positional chess' (a very vague term) that it has to be the perfect book on the topic. Silman's emphasis, and point reiterated throughout the book, is the importance of a PLAN. I am so grateful to Silman for pointing this out to me in this book, and I can see the path to 2000 and beyond clearly now, instead of having no idea about how to improve. Once you are about 1550 FIDE approximately, you hit a wall if you do not know about planning, but once you learn this concept you have the tools you need to get to grandmaster level if you study enough. Every 1900 player or over will throttle their 1500 opponent simply by playing with a plan. I read in various places before this book that you should play with a plan from move one but this meant nothing to me, and it is a very ambiguous statement on its own, but Silman has gone to the trouble of actually explaining this difficult concept, and after this book I have a strong intuitive idea about what planning is in chess. Evaluating the position and finding the correct plans for both sides is what Silman teaches, and there is no limit to the level of improvement you can make in this area - even Super GMs can probably improve their evaluation; he provides the tools for you to go on and do your own hard work to improve. He teaches such an invaluable thing as evaluation of the position and working out the plans for each side, and then it is best to analyse arbitrarily many annotated games yourself with pen and paper, listing the imbalances and the likely plans for each side, (without seeing the next move), and then comparing your notes to the annotations and seeing if you really understood what the proper plans were. It will take a long time to become accurate at this kind of plan evaluation of the position, but the only way is just practicing it in a constructive heuristic manner. Other than the uber-concept of the book - planning - the units of discussion are imbalances; these are things like differences in pawn structure of black and white, minor pieces differences (such as one side having the bishop pair), material imbalances like 2 pieces for rook and pawn, who has the initiative, and so on. All of these are explained, and there is a chapter on each of them. The format of the book is covering these positional concepts (positional meaning what is one the board and where) in a way that exposes the fallacious ideas that his students seem to have, and that you yourself will have, and with each example your sense of understanding increases. This edition of the book culminates in a superb set of 26 questions, mostly asking you to list the imbalances of each side and come up with the correct plans for each side. I love these evaluation style questions and wish there were a book released by an IM or GM consisting of hundreds of these kinds of questions with comprehensive solutions and explanations. There are also a couple of game scores Silman asks you to annotate, and these are superb for improvement. I believe this is what strong players refer to as "analysis" when training, (doing this with annotated before looking at annotations and with your own games to show to a coach hopefully, or to refer to yourself later), and I intend to now use this method with dozens of annotated games to keep improving my chess. The solutions to the questions are extremely detailed and helpful. Overall I would rate this as the most important chess book I have alongside Reinfeld's 1001 winning sacrifices and combinations. I am very grateful to Silman for setting me up so well for improving at chess and making the game seem much more exciting and meaningful than before.
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
brilliant, 7 Sep 2002
From the glossy cover to the myriad of tests at the end, this IS the best chess book I have read. It explains how to read the board through not only the games of masters but of amateurs. This extra insight proves essential in not only understanding what to do, but also what not to do. If you want a book of clever combinations and cheap tactics, this is not for you. But if you want to gain a fundemental understanding of what is happening on the board, this is a great starting place.
The book does assume knowledge of basic chess tactics and hence is not recommended for the absolute novice. Anyone wishing to advance to lower club level and beyond, however, needs to read this book. Buy it.
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19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best chess book I own, 13 Mar 1998
By A Customer
I have a modest chess library (60+ titles) of carefully selected books, and I can honestly say that this is the one that has done the most for my chess understanding; boosting me more than 500 rating points within the space of a year. I recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone serious about wishing to improve his/her game. The lessons and long annotations are exemplary, and the way we get to "see" inside amateur players' minds and follow their thoughts are most instructive.
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