88 of 93 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good, but More Brief Than Complete..., December 13, 2002
This review is from: Complete Book of Chess Strategy: Grandmaster Techniques from A to Z (Paperback)
This is a pretty good starter book for someone, yet is far from complete... The name is a bit deceptive to claim to be a complete strategy guide... This reads more like a Chess Dictionary than an actual strategy guide... Perhaps a better name would of been Chess Dictionary, Grandmaster Techniques from A-Z... I would say this book is mostly good for those U1600 range... The lower you are, the more this book most likely will help you... Just realize this gives a brief basic idea of what something means... By no means is this a complete work that will make you into an IM or GM... I will try to give a basic idea of what to expect in this book...
Basically the book starts with an introduction explaining the goals of this book and how the idea to write happend... Silman explains how he had a student that basically wrote a book like this in a simple form... He could not deal with how books overwhelm person with too much information... So Silman took that idea and expanded upon it, creating basically an easy to digest Chess Dictionary... It then goes into a short explanation of what the various chess notation symbols mean... This can be good for a starter since its easy to confuse !? with ?! :)... Then he gets into Chess notation, this part bothered me a bit to say the least... I wish he covered and explained descriptive notation since that was something I had lots of trouble understanding starting out... I think that would of helped someone staring out very much to say the least... Also make it easier for them to get older chess books and understand them... Still he covers modern notation rather well and in an easy to understand way...
Then we get into the 4 main parts of the book... They consist of The Opening, The Middlegame, The Endgame, and Practical Matters... I will try to give a basic idea of what each one of these parts consist of...
Part I The Opening... He deals with basic opening strategy, castling, development, fianchetto, then he gets into some opening systems... The coverage he gives on the openings he covers here is pretty minimal... At most he gives 1 or 2 pages with only a few moves mentioned... He tries to give basic ideas of the openings using words, instead of a page or two of variations... This can be good for someone new to the game, since its likely to now overwhelm them... The openings he touches on consist of Albin Counter Gambit, Alekhine Defense, Benko Gambit, Bogo-Indian Defense, Benko Gambit, Boring Opening(Reversed London System), Botvinnik Formation, Budapest Gambit, Caro-Kann Defense, Center-Counter Defense, Colle Opening, Czech Benoni, Dutch Defense, English Opening, Four Knights Opening, French Defense, Giuoco Piano, Grob, Gruenfeld Defense, Hedgehog Formation, King's Gambit, King's Indian Attack, King's Indian Defense, Larsen's Opening, Modern Benoni Defense, Nimzo-Indian Defense, Orangutan, Petroff Defense, Pirc Defense, Queen's Gambit(Chigorin system, accepted, declined), QGD(Capablanca's Freeing Maneuver, Tarrasch Defense), Queen's Indian Defense, Reti Opening, Ruy Lopez, Scotch Opening, Semi-Slav Defense, Sicilian Defense, Slav Defense, Stonewall Attack, Torre Attack, Trompowski Opening, Two Knight Defense, and the Veresov Opening... They are listed in alphabetical order so that makes looking them up rather easy... He also touches a bit on preperation and reversed openings... The part concludes with 20 quiz questions relating to openings...
Part two The Middlegame deals with what comes after the opening... This part starts out talking about attacks on the enemy king... Castling on opposite sides, castling on the same side, and even the classic Bishop Sacrifice... He then gets into combinations and combinational themes... Stuff like Clearance Sacrifice, Decoy, Deflection, Double Attack, Fork, Pins/Skewers, Windmill, X-Rays, and Zwischenzug... He touches on King in the center and Kingside focal points next... After that he talks about Mating Net and Mating Patterns... He even lists several known mates, including Blackburne's, Boden's, and Pilsbury... This is good for a new player so he knows what people mean when they refer to these mates by name... Silman even talks a little bit about Sacrifice and Tactical Vision... Silman also gets into such things as Blockade, Candidate Moves/Imbalances, Centralization, Closed/Open Positions, Compensation, Counterplay, Defensive Strategy, Entombed Pieces, Initiative, Material Advantage, Minority Attack, Minor Pieces, Mysterious Rook Moves, Open Files, and Overprotection... He even touches on more neglected concepts to starters... Topics such as Pawn Center, Pawn Chain, Pawn Structure(Backward, Doubled, Isolated, Hanging, Passed, and Tripled Pawns), Pawn Islands, and Pawn Tension... After that he talks about Perpetual Check, Piece Activity, Plan, Principle of Two Weaknesses, Prophylaxis, Queenside Pawn Majority, Restriction, Space, Squares, Static Versus Dynamic Advantages, Support Points, Trading Pieces, and Traps... If your not sure about any of that stuff, or don't know what they mean... Perhaps this book might be something that will help you out... The part ends with a 33 question Quiz relating to Middlegame concepts... Again the coverage of the mentioned topics is rather on the brief side...
Part III The Endgame talks about what comes after the middlegame... The topics he touches on in this chapter deals with the following... Bishop and Wrong Rook Pawn, Cat and Mouse, Exchanging, Minor Pieces in The Endgame, Passed Pawns in The Endgame(Queen Endgame, Pawn Majority and Outside Passed Pawn, Promotion and Underpromotion), Queen and Minor Piece Fights, Stalemate, Using the King(King and Pawn vs King, Opposition, Saving Pawn Moves, Square of The Pawn, Triangulation), and Using The Rooks(Active Rook, Lucena Position, Philidor Position, Rooks Behind Passed Pawns, Short and Long Side of The Board and Two Hogs on The Seventh)... Again the coverage is far from complete, but still it can get you started on right path... Also help prepare you to read a more detailed/difficult book on the topics... This part ends with a 10 question Quiz about Endgame matters...
Part IV deals with Practical Matters where Silman talks about "invisible" facets to the game... He touches on such topics as Blunder, Draw Offer, Point Count, Psychology, and Time Pressure... He does preach to players to never give up and play to win... This part ends with a 10 question Quiz about Practical Matters that were covered...
So this is a pretty good book for a newer chess player, the less you know the more it will help... If not for a few things I might of given the book 5 stars... Mostly the fact that he does not cover descriptive notation and the books name is very deceptive... If someone buys this thinking it is actually a Total Complete Guide of Chess Strategy, they will find over time there are many gaps... Also some of the coverage perhaps is a bit too brief to be helpful... The end of the book with the Questions and Answers to the Quizzes is rather nice... Instead of just printing the answers to them... This makes it rather easy to go over them without back and forth looking... Other starter books to consider might be Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess and The Mammoth Book of Chess... This book is nicely priced and you get good value for your dollar... Also remember Silman is rather easy to read and understand... Just realize this is more of a Dictionary than anything else... The book is very easy to Digest and Should at least help with Chess terms if nothing else... I might not agree with all Silman says, but I still think this is a good book with a deceptive title...
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good reference book for chess strategy elements, April 25, 2002
This review is from: Complete Book of Chess Strategy: Grandmaster Techniques from A to Z (Paperback)
I bought this book after buying Silman's "Reassess Your Chess" and "The Amateur's Mind", both of which have been very helpful to me. This book bills itself as a strategy guide.
This book covers a lot of ground and hits upon a lot of fundamental ideas that a good chess player needs. I am hardly a beginner, but some of the tactical ideas in chess are new to me as I have either never encountered them or I never had them shown to me. This book does a lot to shed light on some of them. It covers such topics as x-rays, windmills, double attacks, pins, forks, etc.
An extremely useful section of this book, to which I have found nothing comparable in other books, is a description of common opening systems and what they try to accomplish. The assessment Silman gives is related directly to his system of imbalances (see his other books for more detailed information on that), and each opening system is picked apart and explained. This is beyond helpful, this is absolutely critical. For this reason alone I bought this book.
The book reads like an encyclopedia -- not exploring each subject exhaustively, but including it and summarizing. This intent is spelled out in the introduction. This is an important point to note -- this book was not intended to be exhaustive.
This is a good book. What prevents it from being a great book is not what is has, but what it doesn't have -- it needs more examples. Each subject after the coverage of openings gets a page or two on average, including one or two examples. I would have liked to have seen more examples to further convey the concepts. This does not mean a student should expect to pick up this book and gain instant mastery, but there should be good "proof of concept" for each idea the author presents. Also, I would have preferred to see coverage of a few more opening systems and/or variations.
As a tournament preparation guide, as the introduction suggests, this book is a very valuable resource.
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