Rating: 
Summary: Improve your chess...
Review: Believe me, understanding Mr. Silman's planning system will raise anyone's ratings...
Rating:
Summary: A fitting addition to Silman's repertoire
Review: Considering the amount of swill being published these days, Silman's work stands out as a beacon of hope, guiding the enterprising Chess student toward the goal of Chess mastery. Silman's other works have been highly praised and fittingly so and this his latest work will further enhance his well-earned reputation as one of the best Chess authors to put pen to paper, period! A word of caution: be prepared to work, hard! Not for the casual reader, this book requires active and intelligent participation. His other earlier books outline Silman's method, a checklist, if you may, of points to consider when devising a plan of action and he expects the use of this system to solve the problems in the WorkBook. He does provide a brief introduction to his system of "imbalances" in a section he calls a 'crash course' A good idea would be to read his other books 'The Amateur's Mind' and 'How To Reassess Your Chess' as they both explain the system in greater detail. It is not a requirement as he points out but you won't regret the purchases. So, to summarise: buy this book and actually use it!
Rating: 
Summary: The book is a germ
Review: First,this is the book that all players should own to improve their chess.
I would give 5 stars for the contents.
The book will teach you how to make plans.There are very rare books on this subjects.
There are 400 pages in the book.
But there are pictures of masters and grandmasters and the positions printed twice.However,that's not bad.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Workbook from Excellent Writer
Review: 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]
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Summary: Much tougher than I thought
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Does not compare to the authors Reassess Book
Review: I like problem-solving books like this one. I find that solving exercises is the most-effective, practical way to improve actual playing strength at the board.
I actually enjoyed this book more than its very popular predecessor, "Reassess Your Chess". If you've read that book, you will find that this WORKBOOK will help you to internalize the lessons taught there, so that they will help you at the chess board. I think the book is geared toward people with a playing strength of 1400-1900 USCF.
If this is outside your range, here are some other books I can recommend:
1200-1600: "It's Your Move", by Chris Ward
1700-2300: "Can You be a Positional Chess Genius", by Angus Dunnington (this one is my personal favorite!)
1900-2400: "Test Your Positional Play", by Robert Bellin and Pietro Ponzetto
2100-2700: "Excelling at Positional Chess", by Jacob Aagaard
Rating: 
Summary: OK but disappointing. Weird production. For beginners
Review: I love The Amatuer's Mind, and think it is a nearly perfect chess book. The edition I own is the second edition. The edition of SIlman's other classic, How to Reassess Your Chess, which I own is the 3rd edition. Perhaps I should have waited for the second edition of the Reassess Your Chess Workbook. Although I am enjoying this book, as it does have flashes of the Silman magic, it is not on a par with the other books I mentioned. It seems far more hastily done and churned out than those books, despite its flashy appearance. For instance, one part of the book, encompassing 73 pages, presents 131 problems. Then, in the section presenting the solutions to those problems, the problems themselves are entirely reprinted before the respective solutions. This means that the 73 pages presenting the problems are redundant and could (should) have been left out of the book. An index card is all that is necessary to cover up the solutions. A double printing of the problems is a waste of paper, shelf space, and is misleading to the purchaser of this book. Plus, the binding itself does not hold up like that of The Amateur's Mind. My copy of the Workbook is already developing a crease in the middle, which probably would not have happened if the book was less bulky. There are other problems with this book. There are approximately 20 or 30 pages of photos of various chess players. There is no point to these pictures, but at least some are of Karpov and Kramnik (although several years old. There is a photo of Gata Kamsky at about 13. Why?). More baffling is that some of the pictures are of such chess luminaries as Jack Peters and Jay Whitehead. Jay Whitehead? No offense to Mr. Whitehead, but why is Silman filling this book up with these pictures? Again, the 423 pages are misleading. This could have been a 200-page book. Finally, the problems themselves, while interesting, are much simpler than the problems in The Amateur's Mind. This feels like more of a beginner's book than that classic. As you can see from my comments, there is something vaguely disconcerting about this book. There is a sense that it was hastily put out and puffed up to a larger size, and not prepared well in terms of its binding. This seems like a project to make money, whereas his two former books were utterly inspired contributions to chess literature. Having said all this, I am enjoying the problems, but I am not getting anything out of this book I could not have gotten by re-reading Silman's two earlier classics. Summary: save your money.
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Summary: Will take me over 2000 rating
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Will take me over 2000 rating
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A very instructive book
Review: 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.
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