How to Reassess Your Chess: Chess Mastery Through Chess Imbalances *(pdf)

How to Reassess Your Chess is the popular step-by-step course that will create a marked improvement in anyone's game. In clear, direct language, Silman shows how to dissect a position, recognize its individual parts and ultimately find the move that conforms to the needs of that particular situation. By explaining the thought processes that go into a master's choice of move, the author presents a system of thought that makes advanced strategies seem clear, logical and at times even obvious. How the Reassess Your Chess offers invaluable knowledge and insight that cannot be found in any other book. Read more

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Why Must Read How to Reassess Your Chess: Chess Mastery Through Chess Imbalances?

I am about a quarter through this book and I would give it no more than 3.5 stars. Jeremy Silman is a fine writer and always tries to make his prose and instructions fun and peppered with jokes (some work, others don't). As an intermediate level player (probably around B or C category) I got this book in the hope that it would help me obtain some strategic concepts and help me navigate middle-game situations better. The problem with this book, as with many chess instructional books generally, is that strategic ideas in chess by themselves are largely useless, unless accompanied by solid tactics and analysis. For example, after studying a chapter on rooks on the 7th and 8th ranks, I came out with almost no more knowledge or understanding than before. Because while he provides interesting examples of when that concept works and when it doesn't, the only real lesson of those examples is: you need to calculate! Could he have supplied better examples where a visualization of the position would provide a better understanding, rather than detailed analysis? I am not sure. Were there lessons to be drawn from those examples that Silman could have explained more cogently? Also not sure. By contrast, I would give Silman's endgame book a rating of 4.5-5. Maybe it's because endgames lend themselves better to more lucid analysis and technique and therefore easier to understand for an intermediate player. Here's the bottom line: if you are an intermediate level player who is not familiar with many concepts in this book, perhaps it could be instructional. For example, knights generally do better in closed positions (more pawns on the board); bishops better in open positions (fewer pawns on the board); or that one ought to aim to place rooks on the 7th/8th rank. But without concrete analysis, these concepts are largely meaningless. Therefore, as a book of ideas, accompanied by seemingly random examples of application, this book could be useful. But I personally find going over master games, with move by move annotations, which includes both verbal prose and concrete analysis, a more useful use of chess study time.

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