Customer Reviews

The Reassess Your Chess Workbook

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Gosh, my wife got after me for having so many chess books, so it became a point to limit them (or else). I got "How to Reassess your Chess" by Silman, and the workbook. I actually like the Reassess book more. It taught me along with others the most. And, the two Reassess books together really form a perfect set. I have regone over all of these books more than once and the ideas have sunk it - I am winning a lot more! I also recommend books on opening traps - like learning tactics! My other favorite type of books is on traps - I like learning chess tactics and traps in the opening.

Why should you buy the Workbook if you've already read the earlier books? What's different about the Workbook is Silman's total emphasis on asking and answering lots of questions in detail that force the reader to actively participate. Silman presents a position and wants you to evaluate it, interrogate it, throw it against a wall and find out what's in its pockets before giving your plan and move.

You will learn to create and use imbalances to devise plans and find moves in every stage of the game because the entire Workbook asks you to do nothing else. This isn't passive learning. It's more like, "Pop quiz, hot shot! Black has just played ...Nh5 and is going to win the two bishops. What do you do? What do you do?"

You don't need to have read the earlier books since Silman gives a crash course on imbalances. If you've read them and felt you'd understood them (and yet didn't see any improvement as I had), this is another opportunity to get it right. Everyone has their own level of chess incompetence beyond which they will be unlikely to improve, and I may have already reached mine and you yours. But how can you be sure? "We can not know what is inevitable until we try good and hard to stop it."

It's a fun read, too. (By the way, I actually worked through the entire book before I decided to "review" it. Maybe some of the other reviewers should've tried doing that.)

This book is in effect a "chess problem" book. The book offers 131 "problems" and their solutions. These problems are actually really more like tests by which means you can test yourself. The solutions part of the book offers actual instruction. Therefore, when you fail to solve the problem or fail to come up with the best move, you'll know where (and why) you went wrong (in the assesment of the position and/or why the plan and corresponding move chosen by you is not the best in the given position). This way you will quickly discover what you're doing wrong. The solutions part of the book is very well written and very clear. It does not contain endless variations, but a lot of words, thus written text. Therefore the solutions to the tests make a lot of sense and even seem obvious. This book is a logical follow up to Mr Silman's excellent "How to reasses your chess", but is perfectly readable separate of the aforementioned book. This book will ask you to think a lot, just like you have to do during an actual game. That is the difference between this book and other instructional chess books where everything is laid out for you. This book assumes some positional understanding on the part of the reader, but in fairness also offers a crash course in the front of the book. The bottom line is that this book is a magnificent learning tool and can't help but improve your game. This book is fun, but also a lot of work. I like it.

I doubt that a player below 1800 could learn much from this book. The principal variations given in the solutions are not obvious. They just aren't. I'm about 1500, and this book is way over my head.

It SEEMS extremely useful. The typesetting and layout are very easy on the eyes. Repeating the puzzle with the answer is helpful, not a waste of space. The English is cogent. The Summaries of Imbalances given with most answers are comprehensible and instructive. But the lines which prove the answers are simply too subtle for a Class C player to understand.

The last part, "self-annotations", asks you to annotate games on your own, and then to compare your annotations to Silman's. In effect, this part amounts to a set of wordily-annotated games with plans and observations instead of deep variations. It is like an advanced version of Chernev's classic, Logical Chess Move by Move. I think this is a great way to get better at chess, for an advanced student.

I am not sure whether it is essential to read Reassess Your Chess first. Silman himself has said that he always preferred Nimzowitch's Chess Praxis (book of exemplary games) to the didactic My System. I think that wordier books sometimes make a player feel as if he is learning more than he really is. But Reassess Your Chess is certainly an enjoyable read.

At any rate, before the workbook I recommend a book by Bellin and Ponzetto, Test Your Positional Chess, which provides several choices for each position and (unlike Chris Ward's It's Your Move [blue]) explains the reasons for and against each move. It also gives you a rating at the end of the tests.

You might return to HTRYC and the Workbook after you've accumulated a few hundred more rating points.

I own about 300 chess books. In the early '80s, I knew all the best ones to get. But my collection became outdated. So I bought about 15 newer ones recently -- mainly those with the very best reviews here on Amazon.com -- all with the goal of improving my rating from under 2000 USCF to clearly over 2000 USCF (over 2200 if possible!).

I think this book is the very best one for several reasons, most of which are nicely described by others' reviews. But first and foremost, you get a LOT of very well thought-out and targeted chess instruction for the price!

(All the books I bought over the years that target one specific opening or another, were basically wastes of good money. That's just not how to improve.)

This book is, in my opinion, the best since Pachman's "Modern Chess Strategy" for instructional value for the 1700-2000 rated player and probably helpful down to about 1400 and maybe up to as high as 2300.

If your chess book budget is limited, put this one at the top of your list, especially if your rating is 1700-2000.

IM Silman's "imbalance" method of chess instruction is justly popular. I shows the amateur--usually for the first time--what is *really* going on in a high-level chess game: to wit, the creation and exploitation of different imbalances (superior pawn formation vs. two bishops, say) around which the two sides make their plans.

This book begins with a summary ("crash course") of his thinking techinque and imbalances from "How to Reasses Your Chess" (HTRYC). Then, a selection of over 110 problems (comprising opening, middlegame, and endgame positions as well as complete games to annotate); and, finally, their solutions. The book's great strength is in this last, very detailed, part. Every solution gives not only the correct move, but explains why: how the move helps one side use his positive imbalances or minimize his negative ones, and how the move fits with his overall plan. In addition, the solution of course offers data about the game: players, date, tournament, etc.

Clearly, Silman put a lot of effort into his book: not only does he give original and detalied analysis of every position (including a re-analysis, from the point of view of his "imbalances" method, of some of the most famous games in chess history), he also chose a very wide range of players--from Fischer and Morphy to obscure correspondence players to 1500-level amateurs--if the game edifies the reader. I wish more chess writers would do this: one learns just as much (and more) from Silman's down-to-earth "Why is this move, which looked perfectly logical to the 1500-rated player, simply wrong?" than from the typical "What marvelous combination did Fischer find here?" one usually finds.

To those who want to learn or practice Silman's thinking technique, which is well worth knowing if only in order to understand masters' games better, this is a very good book. Apart from the hard work and originality, I commend Silman for not being greedy and trying to squeeze more sales out of a previous book: instead of referring the reader to HTRYC for an explanation of his method, the Workbook is a stand-alone book that includes a detailed explanation of it, even if it might hurt sales. (It also has a larger, clearer format and far fewer typos than HTRYC). Such ethical behavior by authors should be the (Grandmaster) norm, but isn't.

One problem, though, is the quirky design: candid photographs of famous chess players are printed in the book apparently at random, and the "solution" section reprints every question before giving the solution to it. The first oddity is due to Silman's desire to show chessplayers as they really are. The second is probably because, on the one hand, Silman doesn't want people to read the problem with the solution "tempting" them on the bottom of the same page, while, on the other, once they *do* decide to look at the solution, he doesn't want them to go back and forth between different pages to make sure they see what bishop or pawn the solution is talking about. In my view, it would have been better on balance to omit both as unnecssary and distracting rather than helpful. That said, this is a minor issue, and perhaps a matter of taste.

If you are interested in chess strategy at all, this is a great book to get.

After almost twenty years languishing in the low 2000s (USCF), I finally began to understand positional play, the fight for the center and key squares, from this book. Silman's ideas are not new, but his simple explanations, practical examples, and constant repetition managed to get into my head what the two hundred other chess books on my shelf could not. After working through the examples in this book - yes, all of them, one by one, on a board, just a few each day - I find my understanding of chess at another level altogether. Now I feel ready to tackle my other favorite authors (Watson, Nunn, Dvoretsky), and to absorb the more subtle lessons they offer.

If you buy TRYCW and let it sit on your shelf (as I did for two years), it won't help your chess at all. But if you put in the work, your efforts will be well repaid!

For years, I have been searching for a workbook that does not, at some points, seem entirely tedious. When one of my friends recommended me this book, at first, I was cautious of it since it was a workbook. But after completing it one month later, I must admit it was not tedious at all.

Silman uses his classic passive style of teaching in this book to create an informative, fun, and extremely instuctive workbook. Silman uses common examples (which is always good) to allow you to identify what is wrong and right in the position, and how to take advantage of it.

This book is a great source for intermeddiate players, but can also be fed to beginners. When you read this book, have a chess board handy because some of his examples require you to play out moves, and it is much better to be able to do it on a board.

There is a lot to write about for this book, with very little space. But this is definetely worth the buy.

[Your ELO should rise significantly if you spend a large amount of time working on this book. By simply rushing through it, you won't get the most out of this book. It will take time to read, hence the four stars instead of five]

I really found this book very instructive. This unique workbook gives 131 problems with thorough solutions covering openings, tactics, strategy and endings. The idea behind this method is to teach the reader how to think at the chessboard. Players of all strengths can greatly improve by studying this book. Chapter 1 starts the book by examining a thinking methods to find candidate moves based on the recommendations of some great chess writers. This is an area where most players could use some advice. Chapter 2 looks at imbalances in chess. This is the key concept that the author will use to help the reader understand chess positions. The next parts of the book consists of the problems, followed by detailed solutions. This book can be read on it's own, although the companion "How to Reassess Your Chess" is also a classic. As a bonus, the book has nice photos of many great chess masters. This book is sure to become a classic.

Some highlights:

1) The introduction where he explains various methods of devising a "plan". I especially think Purdy's method is very good, and can be meshed with Silman's Imbalance method.

2) The Crash course on the various imbalances. For some reason, I find this section much better and easier to follow than what was in the original Reassess book. Maybe because it is more conscise.

3) The Problems: these are great for me..as I learn from example. Don't get discouraged if you don't get alot of them correct. I don't..but on every problem I learn **why** I didn't see the correct answer. And I am improving...it's almost becoming automatic for me when I see any position and start ticking off the imbalances in my head.

4) Simple yet profound statements..that just never clicked for me before. For example, in the openings section he states that the purpose of the opening is to create imbalances, and each player tries to improve whatever imblances there are. Take the Nimzo Indian for example He had an example where he explains what is going on (ie. Black is closing the center to reduce the power of the white's 2 bishops..etc).

It's been very helpful to me.