thanks to a 40 pct off coupon from border, my sat night is all set. I look forward to reading this book.

I don't have it. Hope you enjoy and benefit of it.

I liked this book. Silman does a great job of explaining why I suck!

i like the unnecessary pressure put on us readers right from the start when he explains how a 6yr old gets he teaching method. lol

Hey! I lost my mind... Please give it back!

I borrowed this book from a friend many years ago as a chess noob but, speaking personally, i absolutely could not tolerate the verbal abuse and ridicule in Silman's Amateur's Mind. Even the title is condescending-- as if my weak chess means something is wrong with my "mind". there is one passage where Silman writes that it's a miracle his boneheaded student managed to get to 1700 based on the student's misguided answer to some question (eg, pushing h4-h5 to lock up the kingside where white should be breaking thru- somehow i want to say this is on pages 98-102).

a kinder, gentler approach that accomplishes what Amateur's Mind set out to do is Weeramantry's Best Lessons of a Chess Coach which is a wonderful little book that will not make you want to kick its author in the shins.

hopefully I learn a little something from it. my thinking is to read it a few times and then get that reassess your chess book. maybe i will check out that book you mention.

Cool, i'm sure you could learn something from it. Silman does manage to include moments of useful chess instruction in between insults directed at his students and readers.

I'm really just throwing my 2 cents out there. YMMV

this is the second edition. from what I gather, the quizzes at the end of the book are new. he gives the reader 26 tests and then provides the answers a chapter later.

it looks like if you follow his advice you should be able to give solutions comparable to his.

I do like this idea. if I put the hard work in and go through the book and follow along, I should be able to provide the answers. i think it would be cool to answer all the question before reading the book. then answer them after and see if I really grew my mental skills set. in fact I may just take it upon myself to go and do this exercise.

Here is a pgn of the diagrams in the book. if you add training questions to the positions so you can later come back to them you can facilitate your improvement.
you can read more about the process here:

http://chesstrainingschool.com/why-how- ... l-improve/

I recall, when they had a chess club, near downtown Chicago, I walked in, and I saw this guy with long hair, & a beard, I asked him if he wanted to play some blitz. I didn't know who he was, and I was over 2200 at the tine. It turned out to be Jeremy Silman !!
Needless to say, he crushed me !!
Master Greg

I read this a while back and thought it was one of the best books I have ever read. I never thought of it as condescending but then maybe I just assumed that his comments were tongue-in-cheek?

I hope you can get something from the book, I really do. Personally, I see Silman's teaching as a lie. That he is a good writer is not something enough to forgive his dross. At best, I see him teaching things which should not even be touched upon by the target range of his books. For those who think he is great - ask yourselves why all that knowledge has not lifted you to more dizzy heights. There you go - I said it.

That is a seriously flawed argument. Reading one book is not going to lift you to dizzying heights and to blame a book for not doing so is just ridiculous.

I do think Silman is a bit self-obsessed though. I mean the "Silman Thinking Technique" as he calls it is nothing orginal- it's just an explicit statement of ideas which have gone before.

this book deal with just one particular aspect. a key in his way of thinking. I am half way through and it's nothing I didn't know. i just new it on a more intuitive level. the underlying benefit i see so far is a way to organize and look at the board. this really helps when you just blundered a piece and your plan is shot to hell. you can go through his evaluations and make new plans with a clear head.

he still leaves the art of playing chess up to you to work out the plans. so far it seams he is driving on the fact that you should play to the boards strength, not what you want.

to me, it is slanted more toward positional play and not open board tactics. it is just one more tool to use on the way to improvement.