Rating: 
Summary: Best book for the 1400 to 2000 rated player
Review: This is the updated version of a great book of the same name. It is even better than the original.Jeremy Silman is simply the best chess instructional writer I've ever read, and I've read about 70 chess books. Nimzovich's "My System" is the only other book in a class with this one, and this one is better (though it covers different material. Both are great.) The problem with most chess instruction is that the writer has not taught many students, and so tend to make statements that seem obvious to them, but are way over the average reader's head. Silman has taught many private students, and he therefore understands what it is we are not "getting." There are several concepts he explains that I've heard before, but never understood until reading him. Silman's concepts about imbalances in a position are absolute epiphanies to us poor patzers who have been playing chess for years, but never really understood how to analyze a position except to say, "If I go here, and he goes there ..." Silman shows that analysis of specific variations should be the last thing one does, and shows - step by step - the proper way to analyze. His chapters on attaining a superior minor piece are in themselves worth the price of the book. If you're looking for one book to vastly improve your understanding of chess, I highly recommend this as the first, second and third choice. If this recommendation seems almost too glowing, I assure you, I have no relationship with Silman. I am a writer, who loves chess as a pastime, and have had some of my work published in Chess Life. I seldom get to play in tournaments, but I recently played a USCF Life Master (rated 2200) for the first time, and I drew with Black. I attribute much of my improved understanding of the game to Silman, and the rest to Nimzovich.
Rating: 
Summary: A startling Reappraisal
Review: Several years ago I was 1400 after drifting down from 1600 due to inactivity. I decided to rededicate myself to chess by studying this book. I carefully went through it cover to cover, did all the exercises and even made a notebook on the book similar to the way I had outlined my college text books. I started playing more frequently, trying to use the Silman Thinking Method. Unfortunately I didn't get any better (well, maybe 50 points). I thought the book was very difficult and I was discouraged. I took another break. I decided to put HTRYC aside any study tactics exclusively. I went through Combination Challenge, Sharpen Your Tactics! the big Chess Informant Anthology volume and a couple of others. I also got tactics program for the computer (the Renko CD's). I spent about 10 hrs a week on tactics. I switched to an an almost all gambit opening repertoire. When I took a break from tactics, I worked on the endgame, reasoning that I might go into a lot of endgames a pawn down and needed to hold my own. I came to really enjoy tactics and endgame studies. In less than 2 years I hit 2047 (I'm at 2029 as I write this). I thought this might be the time to return to HTRYC. Please excuse the lengthy preamble but I wanted to make my relationship with this book clear and also to make it clear that I have actually thoroughly read the book. Many of the reviews seem far too generous to me, given the book's many deficiencies. Many have already pointed out, and I agree, that there are far too many typos. It is also true that for a book that claims to be "a complete course to chess mastery" that the endgame section is too skimpy and there is virtually nothing about tactics. Another negative is the unengaging format. The pages are single columned with very long paragraphs. Many pages look like a solid mass of words. You have to really want to study this book because it does not beckon you. Thanks to Amazon for this reader review section. The opinions of others have started me in the right direction on several occasions. One of the main reasons I didn't just jump back into HTRYC is because of several reviews that suggested the book contained flawed analysis when checked by a computer program and also that much of the material came from Euwe and Kramer's Middlegame books. So I decided to find out for myself. I found that 22 games & diagrams are identical to those found in Euwe and Kramer (20 from Vol I and 2 from Vol II). I also found 8 from Pachman's "Modern Chess Strategy." I only have the abridged l volume Pachman book. If I had the 3 volume complete set, I suppose I would find more. Silman doesn't add anything to the original sources except for a lot more words. I very much prefer the Euwe and Kramer and Pachman explanations. Next, I went through some of the Silman games with Fritz 7. I didn't bother with the non-Silman games because most of them are games by world class GMs who don't make so many errors and also the analysis has been made by world class GMs as well. I was amazed at how many errors there are in the Silman games and how misleading the annotations are. I didn't go through them all, but enough to satisfy myself. Two very troublesome things are constantly repeated: 1) Silman gives one of his own moves a "!" or "!!" with no explanation. Since Fritz analysis often does not even consider Silman's move best, it is nearly impossible for the student to figure out why a move is worth a "!" 2) Silman's opponent makes a serious error or blunder and Silman does not give it a "?" Sometimes it is a game-losing blunder but Silman ignores it and that gives the false impression that the game represents a triumph for whatever stragegical theme is being demonstrated. Both of these situations greatly short change the student. This is especially true when it is one of the Problems in the book where the student might get a wrong answer that is actually right or the reverse. Here are 3 examples: In the "Solve These Problems" section of page 240, there is Diagram 151 a position taken from Silman-Fedorowicz, Lone Pine, 1976. Silman is up 2 exchanges, is down a pawn, has doubled pawns and Fedorowicz has the 2 Bishops. The "right" answer is Rxe6 (with the ubiquitous "!"), giving back one of the exchanges. At this point I put Fritz 7 into Shootout mode and let it play the game out against itself. Allowing this 2600 playing program to play against itself should get closer to the "truth" of the position than a game between Silman at 2310 and Fedorowicz at 2200 (he later became a GM but at the time of this game he was 17 or 18 and rated 2200 per my database). In Fritz 7 v. Fritz 7, BLACK WON. Getting back to game as played, Silman gives himself several "!" moves which are unexplained and not supported by Fritz analysis. More importantly, Fedorowicz makes 2 major blunders. The first comes at move 32 where he plays ...d5 instead of ...a4! which will create a WINNING endgame for BLACK. Of course Silman does not give this move a "?" or even comment about it. Later, with the game essentially even, at move 37, Fedorowicz makes the game-losing blunder, ...a3. Again, no "?" or comment from Silman (37...h6 keeps everything pretty even). So the "solution" to this problem is totally misleading and not very helpful to the student. On page 288, there is Diagram 184, R. Ervin-Silman, Berkeley 1976. In this game Silman plays 15...Nd3!! This is actually a major blunder giving White a big advantage (15...Rb2 gives Black the advantage). At move 16, Silman plays ...f5! This is actually a game losing blunder (16...Nf4 would keep White's advantage to a minimum). Then Silman is saved because at move 18 White plays 18 Rxf4--a total blunder. Silman does not give this move a "?" either, instead he points out that 18 Rg1+ also wins for Black. Maybe so, but 18 Qg5+ convincingly wins the game for White. Another totally misleading game. It is incredible that Silman could miss this analysis because 18 Qg5+ is quite easy to see. You would think he would consider it, after all it is a check! At page 267 there is a Problem to Solve, diagram 167, Silman-Petranovic, American Open, 1989. In this problem Black is nearly lost already and it is a matter of how White should finish him off. Silman gives the "right" answer as 1. h3! I have no problem with 1. h3 being a good move but in analyzing the position with Fritz, the best 5 moves in order are: Kb1 and Rdg1 (tied), g3, h3 and Nb5. They are all evaluated at approximately the same strength (+1.22 to +.94). For what it is worth I had Fritz play out the position after both 1. h3 and 1. Rdg1. In this case Rdg1 won much quicker than h3. I'm not quibbling that the point is that Rdg1 or the other moves are better than h3 but simply that Silman considers only 1. h3 (with "!" yet) as the "right" answer. He doesn't discuss any other moves. Doesn't this do a disservice to the student who decided that Rdg1 or Kb1 or g3 was the "right" answer? In the interest of keeping this already very lengthy review from getting any longer, I'm not going to list the other examples I have. You get the idea. I picked the examples at random and did not begin to check them all. I can say that I found serious errors in every game I checked, however. The most common theme would be a Silman opponent error that is not acknowledged by Silman and therefore undercutting the instructional value of the game. Silman makes some errors as well but since his opponents are usually rated 100-250 points lower than him (and some of them are less than Master level), they make a lot more. Including the Silman games with the games of world class GMs and World Champions is a mistake in my opinion. This is doubly true when the annotating isn't honest. I give the book 3 stars because it does have some very useful instructional information. Silman has put Steinitz's classic theories in a convenient and somewhat usable form. Since the Silman games make up such a large portion of this book, re-reading HRTYC is not a real option for me. Thanks to those of you who alerted me to this problem. Now I only have to decide whether or read Pachman or Euwe and Kramer.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book,but w/ lots of verbiage. Read Am's Mind 1st!
Review: Silman is an excellent instructor, and this book is very, very good. However, just as Silman himself has said that he always preferred the practical examples in Nimzowitch's Chess Praxis to the didactic My System, I prefer Silman's Workbook to his explanations in HTRYC. But then comes the problem: The Workbook is too advanced for a Class C player like me. I would modify Silman's own recommended order of reading his books to this: + Below 1500 USCF, read the 1st section of HTRYC, or any other elementary endgames book. (Silman's out-of-print endings book is great, if you can find it.) And STUDY TACTICS!
+ At 1350, read Chris Ward's It's Your Move Improvers [red book].
+ At 1500, you might pick up Silman's book on strategy from A to Z, or something similar. (Winning Chess Strategies by Seirawan and Silman, Better Chess for Average Players, Chernev's Most Instructive Games, etc.)
+ At 1600, read the Amateur's Mind.
+ At 1650, try Test Your Positional Chess, by Bellin and Ponzetto, to see your strengths and weaknesses
+ At 1700, read a middlegame book. Pachman, Euwe, or Reshevsky. Maybe even Soltis, Nimzovitch, or Fine.
+ At 1750, take a look at Dan Heisman's Improving Annotator.
+ At 1800, try the single-position problems in his Workbook, including variations.
+ At 1850, read HTRYC. You'll probably have Eureka moments at this point.
+ At 1900, do the self-annotations in the Workbook. It's tough to improve past 1900, and self-annotations are a practical way.
+ At 2000, ... You're not likely to get much past 2000 without clinically obsessive behavior. If you see this book in the store and it appeals to you, buy it, of course! But in case you haven't seen it, I'm warning you that this book is a much tougher read than the reviews make it sound. Unless you are at least an advanced-intermediate player, you will not be nearly as pleased to open this book as you will with The Amateur's Mind. Just my opinion. Some beginners LOVE this book. By the way, Silman suggests a quick scan for insufficiently protected pieces before strategic considerations. That's not only important for avoiding blunders, but also for saving time. If everything is well-protected, then there simply are no tactics. And a rule of thumb: Think tactics on your OWN time; think strategy on your OPPONENT'S time.
Rating:
Summary: If you have the time
Review: then read this book. I prefer Euwe's Middlegame Book 2 to Silman's verbose approach. Silman fills pages with prose instead of concrete classical analysis. I dont go with hyped teaching methods that dont produce real results. I crush my opponents the old fashioned way- through hard work by studying real chess books, not derivative works by Silman. Sorry Jeremy but someone has to tell the weak club player the real deal.
Rating:
Summary: Forget your USCF Rating--Learn to Enjoy Chess.
Review: Yes, it is true. This book can, if you follow it seriously, help you to vastly improve your game and add many points to your rating. But that doesn't matter. As Silman rightly says elsewhere, the vast majority of amateur games are decided simply by a). who makes the last tactical blunder and hangs a piece; and b). one side psychologically giving up instead of fighting back and waiting for the opponent's next blunder. So, want to add 300 points to your rating? Write every move down and ask yourself "does this hang anything?"; and, no matter what the position, look for the opponent's move and ask yourself, "do I have a two-move-or-less combination to win material?". There. Here's the dirty secret that will make a 1500 player and 1800 one. This, however, means nothing. The sad truth, says Silman (and, from experience, I must agree) is that the vast majority of amateurs have NO understanding of the game whatsoever, sometimes even when they're experts (2000-2200)! An "A" player's rating of, say, 1900, more often than not means simply that he played a lot of games against "patzers" and they hung a piece (or ignored a mating attack) first. He usually still plays, in tournaments, just like a 1100-rated player: that is, sit at the board, look randomly at a few moves that "feel" nice, and then try to calculate them to death. The player who is the first to miscalculate something in this boring and extremely stressful mathematical excercises usually loses. Even when winning, this is no fun, but merely a gruelling excercise in calculation after calculation; and the amateur has (or should have) almost no sense of accomplishment, since their "brilliant victory" is almost always due to the opponent's blunder, not their own good play. The main virtue of this book lies, not in the rating increase, but elsewhere. It not only shows you good chess moves; it explains the principles behind it. Above all, it allows you to begin to UNDERSTAND chess. Chess, says Silman, is a game of IMBALANCES--for example, having an isolated pawn (often a negative) for more space (usually a positive). To win in chess, you must find the right plan that enhances your positive imbalances without allowing the opponent to use his. With many, many examples, Silman shows how this is done. The result of this is that, when taken to heart, you will gradually stop playing like an amateur. Instead, you will start to look for the correct plan and implement it. You will try to UNDERSTAND THE POSITION instead of wildly calculating variation after variation without any insight, and PLAY ACCORDING TO A PLAN instead of move-by-move. In short, you will start to understand what you are doing, and what chess is all about. Yes, you will still often lose, of course (an unpleasant fact which Silman doesn't deny, and actually considers important in building the mental toughness of not being terrified of errors: if worse comes to worst, you'll lose a chess game!). You will evaluate the imbalances incorrectly, or choose the wrong plan, or ignore your opponent's own plan, etc. But even if you DO lose, you will have at least some idea of what you're doing; you were not just sitting there calculating variations endlessly for no purpose. With this knowledge, the reader will be able to make chess FUN--which is the highest praise a book on chess can have, in my view. The game becomes a real battle of wits (e.g., between plans and imbalances), instead of the fake one of "who will blunder first". Even losing while playing according to Silman's advice, even if you follow it pretty badly, is still more fun than winning like an amateur, by the "I didn't blunder first" rule. The amateur will be able to begin to understand gradnmaster's games--imperfectly, to be sure; but far better than most players, who usually see no point at all to most grandmaster moves who do not threathen some immediate tactical win (As Silman shows, Grandmasters almost NEVER play such moves!) The amateur will begin to see the game as a whole; openings and endings will stop being a case of memorizing variation after variation, but instead will be seen as part of the overall idea of creating and using imbalances. So, why only four stars? Two reasons. First of all, the book has LOTS of annoying typoes, which sometimes makes it hard to follow the game. It is obvious that the editing was done in a publishing house by somoene who doesn't know chess too well; there are rarely spelling or grammar mistakes, but the notations of chess moves often confuse, for example, "b4" with "d4". It is extremely annoying to look incomprehensively at a game where Karpov or Alekhine seemingly left a rook hanging for several moves, only to find out later that the rook was never there in the first place. Second, I give four stars, not so much to flaws in the book, but as a warning of sorts to the reader. Tarrasch, the great player, said it best: "strategy-shamattegy, checkmate ends the game." He exagerrated, of course, but his point was that there is little point to talk about "chess strategy" when one still hangs pieces, or allows the ever-popular "stupid knight trick" of letting the opponent fork your king and queen. This is a book about chess STRATEGY. It is a very good one, too, for the amateur. But one should not think that reading this book means that one NEVER needs to do any deep calculations, or that looking at imbalances and figuring out the strategic plan is ALL the thinking one needs to do in a game. Silman, of course, knows this--all he is saying is that strategic understanding of the game will enable the player to calculate WITH A PURPOSE, instead of doing it in all directions with no goal or understanding of the point of calculating. The "lost" star is a warning to those who think that this book is some sort of magic elixir that will cure all their chess ills. It won't, and doesn't intend to do so.
Rating:
Summary: Good book for intermediate player
Review: Do you ever find yourself staring at the chessboard with no idea what to move? This usually happened to me after the opening phase in "quiet" positions. Now what? Generally I would attempt to trade off pieces in whatever order proved convienient or try to open the position with pawn moves. Naturally, better informed players would clobber me and what was worse, I had no idea how. This book opens the door on the mysteries of what move to make and why I was losing so many games. Should you exchange this piece for that, move a particular pawn to chase away a Knight, or fight for control of a file? Are conditions right for an attack on the castled king? Where is the best place to post this Knight or that Bishop, and is my Bishop a stornger piece than his Knight? Do I have a temporary advantage or a permanent one? How do I gain an advantage and where should I try to build an attack on my opponent? These are the questions, and more, this book answers. I have advanced far (Class "A") in the time since I read this book. I consider it a foundation to understanding the game. More than that, I now see things I had no idea even existed. Its like watching black and white TV on a 13-inch screen all your life and then suddenly switching to color HD-TV with a 64-inch wide-screen with surround sound. Having said that, I think if you want to take your game to expert or master level, more than just this book is needed. But it will sure get you to where the more advanced books make sense.
Rating:
Summary: Silman is an excellent teacher
Review: Forget the typos, which are many and embarrassing. Forget the occasional seeping out of ego. This is a great book to read if you are an intermediate player (1300-1900) and want to improve your game. Silman is very good at *teaching* chess, something even some of the greatest grandmasters are not. (Although, at the same time, I think calling the method he espouses "The Silman Thinking Technique" is a bit much. Kind of like calling hitting home runs "The Barry Bonds Swinging Technique." He didn't *invent* it.) Many chessbooks frustrate the average player because they will show a position, and have text such as "a4! ...And Black's queenside attack is stopped," leaving you to wonder how moving one itty bitty pawn stops a whole queenside army's attack. Silman EXPLAINS it; better yet, he shows it, with many games that illustrate every principle he expouses (though I think I did catch one flaw in his analysis in a game). Each chapter builds upon what was learned in the last chapter, so in the end you do become a "complete" chessplayer, and--and here's the important part--your game becomes better in a methodical, organized way. Everything makes sense from the top down,and you learn to look for the *best* move in every position and not just plant your pieces and wait for an opportunity from your opponent. (If you're playing a computer, as many of us do these days, you're never going to get this "opportunity," because computers don't screw up or relax; they just steadily crush you.) This makes a great first book if you've ever ventured into a club and had your keyster whipped, or played with your visiting cousin and found he's gotten a *lot* better since you and he pushed plastic around when you were both ten. Some of the concepts may not be clear at first, however. I found it most profitable to read the book once, put it away for a long while, then get it out again. The second time was not only a lot easier, but I was surprised to see how much I had actually subconsciously incorporated into my games without realizing it. Follow this book with Silman's other masterpiece, The Amateur's Mind, before heading off to Nimzowitch (My System) and Pachman (Modern Chess Strategy). My only minor gripe with the book (aside from the fact that Silman needs to take a class in remedial spelling and punctuation) is the layout: I prefer text in chess books to be in columns rather than across the page, so your eye doesn't drop off when you're trying to follow a long line of moves. However, it's just a minor annoyance, and doesn't make me hesitate to recommend the book.
Rating:
Summary: A most revealing book.
Review: Jeremy Silman is certainly one of te best chess authors of all time. You will learn from this book every time you read it, and you wil find yourself understanding and enjoying GM games a lot more. My advice? Don't be scared if your rating dips a little when you first try to implement his teaching. You will soon rise stronger than ever!
Rating:
Summary: Become a Master
Review: Chess itself is a complex study, which can sometimes become tedious, if not intresting. There are times when chess players feel they have reached a level from which they simply cannot proceed. This book, makes the complex, simple, and easy to understand, even memorisation of the rules and techniques in this book will be enough to equip you as a strong player. This book, slowly guides you through all the concepts of chess, how to plan, how to calculate combinations, how to play positionally. This is just some of the concepts covered in this book. Buy it. If you are still not ready to buy it, let me tell you of mu own experience. I was a 1200 player online. i gradually increased, until i reached a peak. 3 months after reading this book, front to back, i can now beat chessmaster 6000 at the 2100 rating level. Enough Said, BUY IT
Rating:
Summary: Chess Planning and Thinking
Review: This books certainly deserves 5 stars for anyone that is interested in chess at the tournament or serious playing levels. For the player that can't get or afford a coach, Silman teaches the reader to THINK properly and make constructive plans. The book will certainly revolutionize an amatuer's game. Once you read this book, you will never play chess the same again, you will have improved.
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