How to Reassess Your Chess, 4th Edition: Chess Mastery Through Imbalances Kindle Edition

Many concepts mentioned in this book may be well known to us but after reading the book we will realize just knowing concepts and mastering them is completely 2 different things

The best chess games learning ever written

This book is a very different type of chess book. While most books deal in a certain opening or teach you tactics or endgame principles, this book teaches you how to make plans in chess. Note that it does not reach you any opening or any specific thing, but just nourishes your thinking style in chess. Some people might not like it. Like this is not a boom for beginners. Even not for below 1400. But mid level and advanced players will enjoy it thoroughly. I am rated 1900 around on chess.com and lichess, so please take my review in that light.

An extremely important book for any chess player whether beginner or master to read to learn about the concept of imbalances in order to understand the middle game and formulate plans based on the positions themselves.It goes without saying that this book helps players to be able to correctly evaluate positions. A masterpiece by Silman. A must read for any chess player.

Jeremy Silman teaches the imbalances on the chess board, good Bishop vs bad Bishop, Superior minor piece vs inferior minor piece.According to Silman, one should play the chess move according to what the Chess position is asking them to play rather than what one wish to play, he also teaches how to take advantage of the imbalances in the chess board & turn it into your favour.Amazon is selling it at 100 rupees less than what you would get from chess base India ie 1399 in place of 1499

The book does not focus on any particular opening or endgame but it focusses mainly on the middlegame and how you can focus on the board, understand it and drive through the middlegame.

Great Book! Make sure that you know the chess notations and the coordinates of the board. If you don't know them at the back of your head you would take time to grasp the concepts seamlessly. While it is also true that reading this book would hep you get the notations right.

Awesome book. This book along with Chessbase India’s youtube content will definitely help someone who wants to improve at chess. I have personally improved my style of play even though i have not gone through the whole book.

About 30 years ago I reached the heady heights of around 1950, but haven’t played since. My ten year old son started playing competitively just over a year ago and is now playing at around 1450. I am only playing against him so it is difficult to gauge my current level, but I believe I may only be around 1550. Definitely not good enough to teach my son without any aids.After reading reviews, I bought this book a couple of months ago. I believe this book is pitched at the right level for both of us. We both find it difficult. And very thought provoking.I feel that my son could not go through this book by himself, primarily because it is too long and the language used is definitely not pitched at a 10 year old (even though he has a great vocabulary and general knowledge for his age). I find the writing interesting but feel I need to skip over some of it when I am going through this with my son.So far, we are only on about page 65, but I can see that this has definitely changed the way we are thinking about positional imbalances, knights and bishops (being all we have covered so far). I certainly wish I had this knowledge/way of thinking 30 years ago and it is now hard to imagine how I could have been a 1950 without knowing what I have learnt from this book over the last couple of months.This is certainly going to be a long slog and I doubt we will get through it in much under a year, but if we do get through it I feel it will have totally changed our game. It will also be a springboard for later books.I find it difficult to give this five stars as we have only just started it, but so far it has been great so have reluctantly done so.Looking forwards to the rest of the book.

I am no chess expert. I love the game but have struggled to get a lot better. I have only really started reading this book and it may take a lifetime to really fully absorb all that's in it but so far it is giving me a much more rounded view of the game than merely sharp tactics. The concept of a "plan" scared me because I really didn't know what it meant in a chess context but Silman does give you the means of seeing a "plan" (although he doesn't like the word) by assessing imbalances across the board. It is an obvious concept really but explained well and humorously and I must say a very enjoyable read.

When I read Silman's book: "The armatures mind" I was disappointed, in fact I did not think much of this book; this naturally put me off ordering the book: "How to reassess your chess."I took the gamble, and it paid off. This is a first class book and good value for your money, for the amount of information contained in this book.Jeremy Silman has a good sense of humour through out his writing.I do agree with one of the pervious comments that some sample games did leave me a bit cold, also I found a lot of deviations in the book, you are working your way through a game and there is the same game which can have a different out-come.Having said that; the information is there should you require it.There are plenty of test; too many in my opinion. As I worked my way through the book, I ended up only doing some of the test; they are too time consuming, but they do ram the point home; if that is what you want, that's a bonus?One warning I must give: this book takes a long time to work your way through, so don't expect just a few weeks read, it has taken me months, it's hard work, but the results are worth it; definitely a chess book to keep on the shelf for future reference.

I bought the paperback of this beauty. An absolute must own. I started playing again when I was 35 when I randomly began playing a friend on a vessel I worked on. I knew about pins and forks and general rules of thumb but this grounded key concepts that I keep coming back to time and time again. What it means by timing, tempo, iniative. How a chess board can change dynamically over the course of the game and it teaches you what to look for when assessing a current situation and it does this by teaching you about what Mr Silman calls "imbalances" on the board. The book answers the question of "What should my next move be?" and more important than that. It tells you "why". I don't think I have enough time on my hands to ever be a grandmaster but it doesn't stop my love of the game and with minimal time of study (reading on the toilet even! and going through some games at a desk) my ranking went up from 1200 to 1500. That was thanks to Mr Silman. This is an absolute must buy and the paperback version is better for the "flickability" factor. If you're a person who just stated playing and you've ever been stuck in the middle of a game wondering what you should do next then get this book. Incredibly readable and packed with key underlying concepts. It will take you to the next stage of your chess adventure. It's a great game to play and this is a great book.

It looked like it had been dropped from a great height as the corner is damaged. This didn't happen during shipping as the parcel it came in was not damaged. It wasn't enough damage to make it worth the effort of donning a masking and risking my life in a queue at the post office as it was just for myself, but I'd have felt a bit cheap giving a damaged book to someone as a present.