How to Get Better at Chess: Chess Masters on Their Art [Paperback]

Larry Evans (Author), Jeremy B. Silman (Author), Betty Roberts (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 254 pages
• Publisher: Summit Pub (1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0945806051
• ISBN-13: 978-0945806059
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,477,764 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great read for serious players!, April 12, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: How to Get Better at Chess: Chess Masters on Their Art (Paperback)

This is a great book. The only problem is that the title is inappropriate and misleading. It should be titled "Opinions on Chess by the Top Players." This is not a book on chess theory but rather a transcript, if you will, of GMs and IMs giving their general opinions on the game, namely on how to improve, recommended books, and anecdotes. If you have ever wanted to "interview" a top player, buy this book. It's eye opening to see how much these players disagree on a lot of hot topics. If you love to collect books as much as playing (as I do) this is a must for your library. And, of course, anything with Jeremy Silman's name is going to be enjoyable.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Nice Idea, Poor Execution, February 27, 2009

By 

Howard Goldowsky "ChessWriter" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: How to Get Better at Chess: Chess Masters on Their Art (Paperback)

For over a decade, Betty Roberts collected a bunch of interviews with strong chess players and wanted to publish them. The result is this book. For the most part, she asked them all the same questions -- How does one get better?, Study or Practice?, What books or players have influenced you?, How do top players see things so quickly?, Is memory important?, How does winning and losing affect you?, etc. The second half of the book is a set of lightly annotated games by Silman and Evans. What's bad about this book is that the journalism and editing is poor. There are a tremendous amount of typos and grammatical errors. There is no unifying theme or analysis done by the authors. We have, basically, a list of two dozen (or so) answers for each question -- each answer is about a paragraph -- and often the answers contradict each other. For example, one master might say that the proper study/play ratio is 80/20, while another might say it's 20/80. Because these interviews were conducted over the span of ten or more years, Roberts did not get to challenge one set of answers with another. In other words, this is not journalism, it's regurgitation from a tape recorder. That said, however, the material in this book is interesting as raw material. If the reader has the ability to put these raw answers into perspective with other things he has read, then they may be useful. The games in the second half of the book are OK too, as a collection of games, but the notes are too light for serious study. (But if you're a Silman fan, and need to have everything he's written, then you need to get this book because he's annotated most of the games.)

The masters interviewed include Euwe, Tal, Larsen Miles, Browne, Seirawan, Reshevsky, Korchnoi, de Firmian, Benko, Benjamin, among many others.[...]

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars For those who love chess anecdotes, October 1, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: How to Get Better at Chess: Chess Masters on Their Art (Paperback)

This is where bookstores come in handy. I thumbed through this book many times before finally buying it. For the beginner seeking instruction, this book will not offer much. For those on a quest to puncture the mystery of chess, or for those who are just nuts about chess books this offers considerable browsing pleasure -- a sort of chess coffee table book. The intermediate player overwhelmed by the game will take considerable solace in all the GMs and IMs disagreeing vehemently from page to page on how to improve one's game!