CompleteMartialArts.com - The Reassess Your Chess Workbook
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List Price: $19.95
Our Price: $13.57
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Manufacturer: Siles Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 794.1
EAN: 9781890085056
ISBN: 1890085057
Label: Siles Press
Manufacturer: Siles Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: 2001-05
Publisher: Siles Press
Studio: Siles Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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In this large workbook, a stand-alone companion to How to Reassess Your Chess, Jeremy Silman provides 131 problems designed to test a player's strengths and weaknesses. These problems cover openings, middlegames (both positional and tactical) and endgames. As a player completes one of these problems, he or she may then turn to Mr. Silman's answer, which is always detailed yet never dry. Through this process of problem solving, analysis and advice, a player is led to discover the major flaws embedded in his or her playing. Through this same process, a player is also led to an understanding of Mr. Silman's system of thinking about the game and how it differs from many other popular systems of chess thinking. This workbook may be utilized with or without Silman's earlier book How to Reassess Your Chess. It may be used in the workbook fashion described above, or its section devoted to answers may be read as an instruction manual in itself. However one chooses to read this book, it will surely prove a font of wisdom and insight for all student players. Marketing
*Author lectures at national chess tournaments
* Author interviews on national radio stations
* Reviews in national chess magazines
* Advertising in select chess magazines
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Great hit, for Jeremy.... goob book for almost every player
Comment: OK, this work book is a nice work, Silmas gave some ilustration about some position, and then come the puzzles.
Silamn is a International Master, not grand Master, but there are not many grand master who can write a book like Silman.
The puzzle are nice, not very dificult, but some puzzles had nice drawback that you fell that this examples improve your skills.
I read this book, i have to be honest, i didn't fell huge improve, this kind of book is to practice every day to keep practice chess. And keep active my brain. just for that.
For beginer player will learn a lot, about postional skill, maybe this player will taste this book but for an advanced player, buy just for keep training your brain between free time.
Customer Rating:
Summary: This is the Best Chess book ever written BarNone!!!
Comment: This book is awesome. I'm only 1/3 of the way through it. I have a bunch of chess books. The value of this one book exceeds them all. There is so much information packed into these pages. Each puzzle is like taking chess classes with a grandmaster for a month. The best piece of advice in the book that I've read so far is to do self annotations. It forces you to improve your game no matter what. I've gotten so much better just by doing this. Don't waste your time, get this book and throw all your other books in the trash.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: An excellent companion to "Reassess"
Comment: "How To Reassess Your Chess" (hereafter referred to as "Reassess") was, for me, the single most important book of my chess "career" (I'm not a professional, just a casual player). Without going into depth about "Reassess," I can simply say that it helped me to master all areas and facets of chess, and, as a result, my rating has been going up since I recently reread the book.
"The Reassess Your Chess Workbook" (hereafter referred to as "The Reassess Workbook") is an excellent companion volume for "Reassess." Although "Reassess" does have exercises at the end of each section, this workbook will help you to further hone and employ the things that you have learned. Additionally, many of the exercises are very difficult, as they require advanced thinking, and thus, this book can also be viewed as a chess puzzle book as well.
Before the exercises comes a written segment on "thinking techniques," followed by a section dealing with many of the major points of the entire game (this section is not very thorough - it's not supposed to be - but it is useful for reviewing what you've learned from "Reassess").
After you've read this section (which shouldn't be a problem since Silman is such a humorous, fun-to-read writer!), you will do some opening exercises, a quiz on imbalances, middlegame and endgame exercises and even some self-annotations (which are actually quite fun, trust me!). In the back are the answers, so that none of the problems will be left eternally unanswered. And if you ever come into contact with a term you don't know, simply consult the glossary in the back of the book for a definition.
The content is well-chosen: Silman uses positions from actual games as well as position he himself has created. Futhermore, each position is like a mini-lesson, so approximately 130 lessons in one book is quite a deal! The answer key is very well-written, as Silman helps us to mine the secrets and subtleties (and to spot the mistakes) of each game so that we can become better players in the future.
In conclusion, "The Reassess Workbook" is a fine volume, but not an essential book for a chess-player's library. If you have read "Reassess," you will find this book to be very helpful, and I wholeheartedly recommend the purchase of these two books together, as this workbook utilizes much of the material learned in "Reassess".
Customer Rating:
Summary: Original and useful, but some odd quirks
Comment: IM Silman's "imbalance" method of chess instruction is justly popular. I shows the amateur--usually for the first time--what is *really* going on in a high-level chess game: to wit, the creation and exploitation of different imbalances (superior pawn formation vs. two bishops, say) around which the two sides make their plans.
This book begins with a summary ("crash course") of his thinking techinque and imbalances from "How to Reasses Your Chess" (HTRYC). Then, a selection of over 110 problems (comprising opening, middlegame, and endgame positions as well as complete games to annotate); and, finally, their solutions. The book's great strength is in this last, very detailed, part. Every solution gives not only the correct move, but explains why: how the move helps one side use his positive imbalances or minimize his negative ones, and how the move fits with his overall plan. In addition, the solution of course offers data about the game: players, date, tournament, etc.
Clearly, Silman put a lot of effort into his book: not only does he give original and detalied analysis of every position (including a re-analysis, from the point of view of his "imbalances" method, of some of the most famous games in chess history), he also chose a very wide range of players--from Fischer and Morphy to obscure correspondence players to 1500-level amateurs--if the game edifies the reader. I wish more chess writers would do this: one learns just as much (and more) from Silman's down-to-earth "Why is this move, which looked perfectly logical to the 1500-rated player, simply wrong?" than from the typical "What marvelous combination did Fischer find here?" one usually finds.
To those who want to learn or practice Silman's thinking technique, which is well worth knowing if only in order to understand masters' games better, this is a very good book. Apart from the hard work and originality, I commend Silman for not being greedy and trying to squeeze more sales out of a previous book: instead of referring the reader to HTRYC for an explanation of his method, the Workbook is a stand-alone book that includes a detailed explanation of it, even if it might hurt sales. (It also has a larger, clearer format and far fewer typos than HTRYC). Such ethical behavior by authors should be the (Grandmaster) norm, but isn't.
One problem, though, is the quirky design: candid photographs of famous chess players are printed in the book apparently at random, and the "solution" section reprints every question before giving the solution to it. The first oddity is due to Silman's desire to show chessplayers as they really are. The second is probably because, on the one hand, Silman doesn't want people to read the problem with the solution "tempting" them on the bottom of the same page, while, on the other, once they *do* decide to look at the solution, he doesn't want them to go back and forth between different pages to make sure they see what bishop or pawn the solution is talking about. In my view, it would have been better on balance to omit both as unnecssary and distracting rather than helpful. That said, this is a minor issue, and perhaps a matter of taste.
If you are interested in chess strategy at all, this is a great book to get.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Comment: This was a great book to get after I read "The Amateur's Mind" by Silman. Silman's system of looking for and creating imbalances, then exploiting the imbalances, has given me a framework for thinking about chess. Much better than books like "How to Think Like a Grandmaster," which really didn't teach me anything.
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