Rating: 
Summary: Great Summary - Perfect for Avid Players Wanting to Move Up
Review: Gives an excellent overview of basic strategies. Perfect for the avid chess player who wants to start toward tournament play (on-line or otherwise). I got it because I was getting blasted on www.chessclub.com. I'm now able to hold a 1200 pretty consistently now (when I don't get lazy). This book, and a little polish on an opening repretoire from "Modern Chess Openings - 14" put my game above every friend and family member I play. I have to regularly get humbled on-line to remember I'm not the "master" my friends and family think I am. I've given this book to many of them (to make things more fair and fun.) Definitately not for high-end masters, except to freshen up as the author states. To all those solitaire players out there (you know who you are) make the move to a time-kill with mental value rather than one that numbs the brain. ;-)
Rating:
Summary: Very good coverage of topics
Review: Highly recommend this book. Covers a great range of topics from openings strategies to tactical strategies. Easy to read and understand. The openings are not covered as indepth as some books that are dedicated to chess openings, but it does a good job of covering a little bit of everything.
Rating: 
Summary: A good reference book for chess strategy elements
Review: I bought this book after buying Silman's "Reassess Your Chess" and "The Amateur's Mind", both of which have been very helpful to me. This book bills itself as a strategy guide. This book covers a lot of ground and hits upon a lot of fundamental ideas that a good chess player needs. I am hardly a beginner, but some of the tactical ideas in chess are new to me as I have either never encountered them or I never had them shown to me. This book does a lot to shed light on some of them. It covers such topics as x-rays, windmills, double attacks, pins, forks, etc. An extremely useful section of this book, to which I have found nothing comparable in other books, is a description of common opening systems and what they try to accomplish. The assessment Silman gives is related directly to his system of imbalances (see his other books for more detailed information on that), and each opening system is picked apart and explained. This is beyond helpful, this is absolutely critical. For this reason alone I bought this book. The book reads like an encyclopedia -- not exploring each subject exhaustively, but including it and summarizing. This intent is spelled out in the introduction. This is an important point to note -- this book was not intended to be exhaustive. This is a good book. What prevents it from being a great book is not what is has, but what it doesn't have -- it needs more examples. Each subject after the coverage of openings gets a page or two on average, including one or two examples. I would have liked to have seen more examples to further convey the concepts. This does not mean a student should expect to pick up this book and gain instant mastery, but there should be good "proof of concept" for each idea the author presents. Also, I would have preferred to see coverage of a few more opening systems and/or variations. As a tournament preparation guide, as the introduction suggests, this book is a very valuable resource.
Rating:
Summary: A good reference book for chess strategy elements
Review: I bought this book after buying Silman's "Reassess Your Chess" and "The Amateur's Mind", both of which have been very helpful to me. This book bills itself as a strategy guide. This book covers a lot of ground and hits upon a lot of fundamental ideas that a good chess player needs. I am hardly a beginner, but some of the tactical ideas in chess are new to me as I have either never encountered them or I never had them shown to me. This book does a lot to shed light on some of them. It covers such topics as x-rays, windmills, double attacks, pins, forks, etc. An extremely useful section of this book, to which I have found nothing comparable in other books, is a description of common opening systems and what they try to accomplish. The assessment Silman gives is related directly to his system of imbalances (see his other books for more detailed information on that), and each opening system is picked apart and explained. This is beyond helpful, this is absolutely critical. For this reason alone I bought this book. The book reads like an encyclopedia -- not exploring each subject exhaustively, but including it and summarizing. This intent is spelled out in the introduction. This is an important point to note -- this book was not intended to be exhaustive. This is a good book. What prevents it from being a great book is not what is has, but what it doesn't have -- it needs more examples. Each subject after the coverage of openings gets a page or two on average, including one or two examples. I would have liked to have seen more examples to further convey the concepts. This does not mean a student should expect to pick up this book and gain instant mastery, but there should be good "proof of concept" for each idea the author presents. Also, I would have preferred to see coverage of a few more opening systems and/or variations. As a tournament preparation guide, as the introduction suggests, this book is a very valuable resource.
Rating:
Summary: Help Me Beat the Computer! Awesome Book!
Review: I bought this book yesterday and read page 163. I then turned on my Chess software program KChess Elite and won three games in a row using the 'Legacy Mate with less than 18 moves per game. This book is awesome. I'm going out today to buy a stronger Chess program. Who knows maybe someday I'll get to challenge 'DeepThought' :)
Rating:
Summary: this is good book
Review: i did nevr reed this book. i dont kno it is good. i dont reed vary meny books. theys is boring to me. one tym my mom made me reed a book called hooked on fonix. hooked on fonix teach me good.
Rating:
Summary: Insights well worth it
Review: I just started playing chess again after about ten years away from it. A few days ago I bought this book and I found the simple, clear explanations gave me insights that I never got out of all the dozens of chess books I have wasted money on before. I wish this book had been published ten years ago! I will read it cover to cover before every tournament.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good, but the title doesn't match the content
Review: I learnt a fair bit from this book by Jeremy Silman. He has done a good job with this book. My USCF rating rose by about 200 points after readings that. Maybe it will be the next chess classic. But I feel that it's a bit misleading to call it a "complete book of chess strategy" since I did not see much detail in the few pages that covered each topic.
Rating:
Summary: Very Good But Not Enough Depth
Review: I liked this book, but not nearly as much as his How to Reassess Your Chess. While most topics are covered, there is simply not enough explanation on some of them. For example, explanations of bishop sacrafices, deflections, and other tactical issues are able to be covered in 1-2 pages. However, positional topics, like "Mysterious Rook Moves", weak squares, and imbalances in space, material, etc., are too complex to be discussed in any short format. I do recommend this book as an introduction to these themes, but Winning Chess Tactics is better for tactical issues, How To Reassess Your Chess is better for positional understanding, Pandolfini's Endgame Course is better for, well, endgame work, and Standard Chess Openings is better for Opening Knowledge. If you want a quick refresher with little depth, this is it. If you want the depth, you'll still have to go elsewhere. I would love an expanded 2nd edition that covers all topics in greater detail. Then you'd have a truly "complete" book. Silman is a great teacher, and a clear, concise writer. This book by any other author would probably only get 3 stars (assuming it was written in a less effective manner).
Rating:
Summary: Very Good SECOND Book - Too Advanced for Beginners
Review: I think it is worth noting that this is a complete book of chess "strategy" - not a complete book of the "game of chess" as a whole. I went searching for a book about chess that would help me improve as a player, and this book was an outstanding help to me. Within just a couple days of reading and doing some of Silman's quizzes, I noticed that I was suddenly "seeing" many moves that I didn't recognize in the past - for example, I never considered a chess piece "sacrifice" prior to reading this book, and now I bait my opponents into messes by doing so all the time (which demonstrates how much of a novice I really am). The only downside to this book is relates to my first comment: this book is about strategy, NOT rules. Often when playing other novices and so-called intermediate players, rule issues sometimes come up (such as when you can and can't castle - I know it's probably basic and simple - don't laugh) and Silman's book is absolutely no help in resolving rule clarifications. I figure that I should have realized that when purchasing only a strategy book, but it seems that including a section on the rules would improve this book, since you are going to have to buy another book to get them if you are a first-timer. I was brought up on chess from time-to-time, but by no means knew all the rules prior to purchasing this book, and still don't consequently. For this reason, this is NOT a book for true beginners. Insofar as chess strategy alone is concerned, however the book is wonderful and written in an enjoyable style.
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