In doing so I was bemused by some of the straw-man arguments pretending to attack Silman's books or the philosophy of chess behind them, or at least the applicability of these to players rated below Class A. Many of these misplaced critical comments castigate Silman for supposedly ignoring the importance of tactics and for advocating vague positional rules at the expense of concrete calculation. Nothing could be further from the truth! Silman repeatedly makes comments such as these (in the context of position-specific illustrations):

* * * "Playing for a tactical shot is fine if you can force it. If not, take your time, keep your eyes on the tactics, get the rest of your army into battle, and pay lots of attention to the positional features on the board! You're never going to go anywhere if you can't blend positional and tactical considerations together."

* * * "[The student is] Finally mentioning his center, but not going any deeper into the position... instead of taking a long think and becoming master of this particular situation, he sits back, flicks out a developing move and hopes that positive things will just happen."

* * * "White is still playing without any kind of plan. He is not reasoning things out and he is not analyzing any variations. This type of 'move by move' existence is often employed by players from the beginning level right up to the revered ranking of master. No matter what your rating may be, it is the wrong way to play chess!"

What *I* see Silman saying is that tactics can be defined as how you carry out your plans; that good plans are based on an accurate assessment of the position (supported by accurate calculation); that by patiently improving your position you can develop tactical opportunities and carry them out in a way that does not leave you vulnerable to counterplay after you have won your pawn (or what-not), while simultaneously denying tactical opportunities to your opponent; that you should assume your opponent will see your threats, only playing threat-moves if they improve your position no matter how your opponent replies.

In reading about the erroneous thinking of his students (from 900 up through 2000) I see a lot of my own errors popping up, and in examining these I find myself able to appreciate the insights Silman offers. (It's also reassuring to see these players, some of them higher rated than I am, doing this stuff.) The problems these players experience stem from their misreading of the position, hence the emphasis of the book: learning how to read the chessboard. That's what positional play means. Comments such as "chess is 99 percent tactics" seem to ignore the fact that in identifying a weakness and coordinating your pieces to take advantage of it (or more broadly, identifying differences in the assets and deficits of each side and then developing a plan to manipulate these to your advantage), you ARE playing positional chess; tactics are simply the details you employ to carry out this strategy. Very, very important, true, but not 99 percent of chess.

Annotated Master-level games alone don't explore moves that amateurs might have made instead, and how one might respond to them, and why they might be wrong. Silman often starts off annotating a Master game and then has students of various rating levels play the game beginning at some critical point of the game (with Silman playing the opponent), having them explain their moves as they go along (while Silman analyzes their reasoning in the text).

(continued)

Nor does Silman ignore tactical sacrifices or encourage his students (or readers) to do so. In fact, the text points out a number of concrete instances where his students fail to calculate properly, ignoring such tactical threats because they are pursuing their own plans without taking into account the possible plans of their opponents.

Of course, all these skills take time and experience to acquire, but if one is aware of their importance and is actively attempting to develop them, one is on the right path so far as it goes.

As for Silman supposedly ignoring openings, "How to play the openings" rates a chapter in the book. Of course, in that chapter he is illustrating the elements of positional play (and very flexibly, not dogmatically adhering to classical chess rules), not teaching specific openings: to learn an opening, study an opening monograph.

I really like the way Silman repeates key points, both in hammering home a point and in illustrating that point concretely. I'd come across some of these same points in other chess books but for some reason I seem better able to absorb them from Silman's book (The Amateur's Mind).

Of course, you have to be willing to actually apply these lessons. The entire first chapter of the book was on knights vs. bishops. If you are a little annoyed with this and think, my goodness, that's a bit pedantic and perhaps even precious, then you won't get anything from it. Silman thinks it's such an important (and underrated) subject that he gives it front billing, as it were. But you may just find yourself realizing how many middlegames you've misplayed because you didn't deny your opponent forward positions of support for his knights, or failed to open a position up to permit your bishop pair to become effective (or opened it up to the advantage of your bishop-owning opponent and to the detriment of your knights), or traded a knight for a bishop (or vice-versa) when the nature of the position dictated the superiority of the piece you traded away.

I might also add that in my quest to improve my game I've switched to correspondence chess. This encourages deeper evaluation by giving you extra time and the ability to apply yourself to the game when it is convenient to do so.

OTB players might object that this doesn't develop speed, but speed will come as a result of experience and knowledge over time. If you are able to correctly assess a position because you have seen it before or because you have trained yourself in good analytical habits, presumably you will be faster in the application of those habits than you would if your mind were creaking along without a clue. I would rather learn to be a good chess player and have speed develop as an epiphenomenon of this, than seek speed for its own sake and at the expense of good play. And frankly, I find the game more interesting when one has the time to savor it.

Another advantage of correspondence chess is that it allows you to spend more time on openings, using game databases (but not chess engines) to do so. I firmly believe that openings are very important, because they determine whether you get a nice middlegame or not, and in turn that may strongly influence the endgame or game result. I also think that unless you are a real whiz you should concentrate on a few openings (say, one as White and two as Black, if possible), staying flexible but at least shooting for that, so that you have a chance to get to know those openings, learn how to play them to your advantage, and learn what kind of middlegames they often lead to -- this in turn giving you some sense of middlegame strategy emerging from the opening.

I should perhaps point out that these opinions on correspondence chess and openings are my own, not Silman's (so far as I know).

Seems a little odd. There are a number of players who tend strongly toward the positional style and many of them are strong players, yet nobody seems to have attached vaguely insulting epithets to them. (Though there were some complaints, I think during Petrosian's reign, that he was too drawish.)

<Another incident was when he was playing Pal Benko in a series of blitz games. After the games were played, Benko looked at Silman in shock, and said that Silman was the most boring chess player he had ever encountered!This statement convinced Silman to thus retire from competitive play.>

Silman must have been doing something right to get to 2385. I'm curious to know what the score was in these games with Benko. If Benko was getting squeezed and unable to make use of his usual methods, he might have made such a remark in frustration, though it would be unjustified and unconscionably rude.

* * * "[Merely] Defending and following the basic rules... is simply not good enough! You must come up with creative ideas that challenge your opponent! Putting your arms up, closing your eyes and fending off blows isn't going to get the job done."

* * * "Don't just react to the opponent's threats. At times, defensive moves are called for. However, if you find that you have lost track of your own plans and are just reacting to your opponents' blows, you must realize that you are on the road to defeat. Chess is a game where the opponent tries to impose his will on yours. He wants you to do what he tells you to do. Fight like a madman and refuse to go along with his agenda!"

At the same time, however, he very rightly points out that:

* * * "Patience is a real virtue in chess. If your opponent has little or no counterplay, then why should you force the issue [where no forcing line is confirmed by calculation]? It is much better to take your time and add a host of little advantages to the plusses you already possess."

Finally, to a few misguided individuals who, when posting comments to Silman's games here at chessgames.com, instead of making constructive comments, post remarks such as "The thinking player beaten by simple tactics!", and similar inane remarks:

First, did you expect Silman, unlike any other player in the database, to play every game perfectly and never lose, and never overlook any tactic?

I just won a game I am quite proud of. I call it my "Silman Game" because I was inspired to play it the way I did after reading The Amateur's Mind (I'm about 1/3 of the way through). Even though it may be flawed, I played with a plan and as a result played much better than I would have without a plan.

This was a correspondence chess game and note that even though Black's opening struck me as a bit weak, that in the Chessbase database through the fourth move, with White and Black both ELO rated at 2400+, of the 46 games responsive to such a search, Black wins 17 and White wins 11 -- so it may have something going for it.

Seeing the way things were going in the database and deciding that I needed to start playing principled chess of my own devising, even though it might mean leaving the database, I was examining candidate moves for my fifth move and started trying to read the board according to what I had been reading in The Amateur's Mind.

I noticed that as White I had a queenside space advantage and that Black's pieces were cramped. My interpretation of Silman was that I should attempt to increase my control of queenside space while keeping the Black pieces bottled up and avoiding unnecessary exchanges; also that play could only proceed in the wing when the center was stable, so I had to simultaneously attempt to stabilize the center.

There is one game in the Chessbase database (not Master level) that continues 5.Qa4 c6 but after that White develops in a different way than I do and ends up losing. I attempted to make every move count toward the pursuit of the aforementioned (e.g., 6.b4 to keep the knight out of c5, intending d5 followed by e4). Also per Silman, I attempted to gradually but consistently improve my position while restricting Black counterplay, avoiding making threats unless in so doing my position was improved regardless of Black's response (at least, according to my own amateur perceptions).

I'm not sure about 16.g4, but at the time I made the move it seemed consistent with my goals while not unduly risky. Subsequently I wondered if Black might have made more out of it.

Both players were rated in the 1600s.

I showed that game to some whippersnapper playing at or below my own level, telling him that managing to gradually improve my own position while denying a strong opponent all counterplay is my idea of masterful chess, and he had the audacity to call it "boring".

But isn't this the norm during a game, unless one's opponent makes a mistake one can take advantage of tactically? What is the alternative? Ill-timed, speculative "activity" which allows one's opponent critical opportunities, while you both engage in an unpredictable (or poorly calculated) race to see who gets lucky first? I think Silman was right when he wrote that many amateurs seem uncomfortable with the idea of a patient, developing middlegame, and that they seem to think that unless they are making direct threats (whether the position calls for this or not) they are playing ineffectually. This has long been an error of mine and now I am attempting to address it. Of course, it takes time to learn how to read a board and how to play well, but this is the correct road and already I see significant improvement.

I trust you have the revised/expanded second edition. That may be critical, since Silman made a point not merely of correcting any typos that may have slipped through, but of simplifying the language in a number of places to make it clearer to the ordinary reader, and otherwise tuning it up based on reader feedback and so forth, as well as adding a large test section in the back.

The original position came from: 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.Nc3 Nc6 4.Bb5 Nd4 5.o-o Nxb5 6.Nxb5 d6 7.d4 b6? 8.Bf4? Ba6?

The game, with 1300 as White and Silman filling in as Black, continued:

9.Qd3 cxd4 10.Nfxd4 e5

and after some additional commentary, Silman writes: "As it turns out, White had the strong 11.Qc4, threatening both 12.Qc6+ and 12.Nc7+. Then 11...Rc8 is met by 12.Qa4! However, it's impossible to find a game-saving shot if you don't look for it!" -- The Amateur's Mind (2nd ed.), p.182.

I had some extra time so I ran that line on Fritz. As a matter of fact, for black, Fritz likes 11. ... ♗xb5 more than 11. ... ♖c8 <after 11. ... ♗xb5>

click for larger view

Analysis by Fritz 8:

1. ± (1.06): 12.♘xb5 ♖c8 13.♕a4 ♕d7 14.♗g5 h6 15.♗h4 g5 16.♗g3 f5 17.exf5 a6 18.♕xa6 ♖xc2

click for larger view

{ Analysis by Fritz 8:

1. ± (1.09): 12...Rc8 13.Qa4 Qd7 14.Bg5 h6 15.Bh4 f5 16.exf5 Rc5 17.c4 d5 18.Rfe1 Qxf5

2. ± (1.19): 12...exf4 13.Qc6+ Ke7 14.Nxd6 Qxd6 15.Qxa8 Qc7 16.e5 f6 17.e6 f5 18.Rfe1 Nf6 19.Qf3 Qxc2

3. (1.69): 12...Rb8 13.Nc7+ Kd7 14.Na6 exf4 15.Nxb8+ Qxb8 16.Qxf7+ Ne7 17.a4 Kc6

4. (2.53): 12...Qc8 13.Nc7+ Kd7 14.Qxf7+ Ne7 15.Nxa8 exf4 16.Nxb6+ axb6 17.Qxf4 Qxc2 18.Rad1 Qxb2 19.Qxd6+

http://www.jeremysilman.com/faq.html

[Not in the order they occur on the webpage]:

[Question]: What is the best order to read your books?

The answer depends on your strength. However, let’s say you are 1800 or below. In that case:

Read HOW TO REASSESS YOUR CHESS through page 28.

Next: Read all of THE AMATEUR’S MIND.

Next: Go back to HOW TO REASSESS YOUR CHESS and read it all.

Next: Read all of THE REASSESS YOUR CHESS WORKBOOK.

Take note: THE COMPLETE BOOK OF CHESS STRATEGY is not a book to be read cover to cover. It’s a reference work. Thus, if you have a question about isolated pawns, go to that section and it will give you a quick, easy to understand explanation. If you want to learn about mating patterns, go to that section and you will be given the keys to the universe. You can use this book whenever any chess question comes up and it will give you all the basic information you need in 2-4 pages.

[Question]: What attracted you to a chess career?

The money and the women.

[Question]: Who do you think are the top 10 players in history?

1) Fischer, 2) Kasparov, 3) Karpov, 4) Lasker, 5) Alekhine, 6) Capablanca, 7) Steinitz, 8) Botvinnik, 9) Tal, 10) Petrosian.

[Question]: When did you learn to play chess?

I learned how to move the pieces at the ripe old age of 12. I played in my first tournament two months later and walked away with a 1068 rating. I should add that I was overrated, since my one victory came from a man that actually grabbed my Rook and mated himself. He wanted the game to end so he could make an appointment! My real strength after my first event was around 900.

[Question]: How fast was your progress?

I became class a "B" player when I hit 14 (1670), was "A" class at 15 (1900) and reached mid-expert strength (2100) by the time I was 16.

[Question]: When did you become a master?

I moved to San Francisco when I was 19 (from San Diego) and instantly earned a master ranking, tying for first with U.S. Champion John Grefe (and drawing our individual game) in my first SF event.

[Question]: Why didn’t you ever get the grandmaster title?

Getting the title calls for a tremendous amount of talent, or a tremendous amount of work. I don’t have the talent to pick the title out of thin air, so complete devotion to chess would be the only way to accomplish this task. The usual way that guys like me get the grandmaster title is to play in several round robin (gm-norm) European events a year. You might bomb in four or five in a row, but eventually the stars will be in alignment and a norm will come your way. Then you repeat the process again and again until you obtain the required three norms. Unfortunately, I have interests outside of chess and am not willing to put in the necessary energy to accomplish this goal. In fact, it’s hard to get me out of my house! Having me fly to Europe over and over just isn’t going to happen.

=====

Quite interesting!

(: ♗ Bishop Berkeley ♗ :)