Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #116109 in Books
• Published on: 1999-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 443 pages

Customer Reviews

Learn the Reasons behind the Actions
This is a advanced chess book for the improving player. It is beyond tactics or tricks, but dives into the positional element of the game. It deals with imbalances, Knight verses Bishop endings. It has sections dealing with weak squares and where to attack the other party. This book allows the average chess player to see the board clearer. After reading the book one will have a better understanding of the development and future of the game. You learn to read the weaknesses of the pawn structure and the defense to choose the best game plan for victory. This book improved my ratings on Yahoo. I am up to 1551 with a strong win over a 1575.

This should be your first book in strategic play and planning
After giving "How to reassess your chess" such a bad review (one star) someone told me to take a look at Silman other book (Especially after he won the Chesscafe award for his latest book). And my opinion is that this is much better book for improvers. "The Amateur's Mind" is instructive (through the whole book) and gives a player (around 1500) a very good introduction in middle game strategic elements and planning.

I believe I have to look at "How to reassess your chess" again, but until then I would recommend "The Amateur's Mind" as one's first book (1500-1800) in strategy and planning and for instance "Strategic Play" (1900-->) by Mark Dvoretsky as a good second book.

Common errors and misconceptions exposed!
In "The Amateur's Mind," a book by "How To Reassess Your Chess" author Jeremy Silman, Mr. Silman looks at many of the areas of a chess game and shows how to play them (or how not to play them). To emphasize his point, he shows games of himself vs. an amateur and shows the common errors and pitfalls the average amateur encounters in his play. If you learn from the mistakes, and follow Mr. Silman's example (he's always better than the amateur and does the "right thing"), you'll be a better player.

The book itself was helpful to me in that I, too, was an amateur (I didn't know my rating or anything like that, but I played at that level). Reading this book really helped me to think about how I played chess, and I think, certainly helped my play.

The problem with this book is that Mr. Silman is EXTREMELY critical. He always highlights the bad play of amateurs, and very, VERY little of the good. I was hoping for a more balanced outlook, but that's not what I found.

Still, the good outweighs the bad. After reading this book, I felt that I could feel what my opponents were thinking, and I knew how to respond. In fact, I'd call this book a chess-psychology book. Not only do we learn how the amateurs play, but we learn how they think (or at least how Mr. Silman's students think; I assume they represent the average amateur). Mr. Silman himself has written down what they verbally thought while playing some of these games, and often (with unnecessary harshness) points out if they're on the right mental track or not.

Included in the back are some exercises, which you should do after you've read all the chapters, understood them, and have absorbed the material from each. These exercises are good for testing what you've learned from this book.

This book, all in all, is very helpful, but not as much as Silman's masterpiece, "How to Reassess your Chess," but I think any chess player should have both: "Reassess" teaches YOU how to play a good game, and "Amateur's Mind" shows you how the opponent plays.