The Amateur's Mind: Turning Chess Misconceptions into Chess Mastery

This book told me a lot about myself.

A good “walkthrough” between chess student and master on how students think and the Master pointing out how to correct fallacious reasoning or blind spots in the approach to play that sub 800 Elo players have. The book itself is crisply printed with clear diagrams, although it could be smyth sewn binding so it could be laid flat better. The book assumes in presentation that you will have a board in front of you to go through the conversation between student and master, and this does help enormously. Readers will find this book a struggle without having this. Also a pencil to annotate in the margins will help you

i got this book about 4 years ago when started up playing chess again. i read the book but could not understand most of it. so i carried on buying books on chess hoping to get better. then i picked the book up again and read over the chapters again and again then i started to understand the game more.the book as made me a much better player and think its a good buy.the idear of the book for me was reading it 3 times to get a good idear of how a amateur and master thinks.

This book explores some of the thinking that goes on behind chess moves and strategies in real life coaching sessions and despite the vey American language it doesn't take too long to work out what's going on. However, despite the authors assumption that everyone reading the book will be able to identify with his thought processes, I found myself feeling that his explanations were not immediately clear much of the time and I only profited from this book when I was able to sit down, quietly, with a board and pieces and an hour or more to spare. Not easy bedtime reading, but it pays off if you can devote some time to it. Enjoyable, innovative, and it will improve your chess, but expect to put in the hours.

It’s a big book bigger than I expected. It’s written in an easy way to understand and is very detailed. If you have to buy one chess book buy this one

Easy to read and really useful for beginners like me. I haven't finished the book and already I can see some improvement in the way I look at my games. Last night I won a 1600-rated guy, and I'm around 1300! :-)

Great book for beginners intermediate players

Son loved it

Esta obra, é para aqueles que desejam melhorar suas interpretações nas partidas de xadrez. Seja jogando, estudando, reproduzindo partidas, ou aprendendo novos ensinamentos. Nos coloca como uma terceira pessoa, usando varios alunos(as), parceiros(as), nos exemplos com uma variedade de conhecimentos, que nos leva a pensar sobre os lances realizados, suas imprecisões e seus acertos. Desde o primeiro capitulo com "imbalances", já traz a necessidade de desnvolver ideias a partir das diferentes estruturas, em material, ou em criação de planos. Estou lendo com calma, pois merece dedicar algum tempo, em cada capitulo lido. Chegou no prazo prometido, e comprei este livro com base nos argumentos postados por outros leitores. Muito bom para praticantes desta arte.

I was a little apprehensive to start this book, simply based on the title. I've read a few other chess books and consider myself above "beginner" (not sure of my exact rating, maybe 1200-1300). But now that I've started it I've found it to be an incredible read. The book is broken into chapters which are based on various chess concepts (Bishop vs. Knight imbalance for example). Silman presents a situation (sometimes from a real game, sometimes just made up) and then allows multiple of his students (of various ratings 900-2000) to play as one side while he plays the other. The students reveal their assessment of the initial situation and their reason for each move thereafter. All the while Silman (speaking to the reader but not to the student playing) judges their reasoning and points out where they missed something important or misconception that misguided them. He lets them play out the situation until they reach their point of ruin or success. Silman's assessments are succinct and well thought out. I've read a few books recently that were too dumbed down and slow, but "Amateur's Mind" for whatever reason never bored me or seemed dull or simplistically written. I have found this style to extremely useful for grasping some of these concepts and I find this book already positively affecting my chess game (and I'm only on page 100). FYI: I found a chess board to be necessary for following along in this book. There will be a diagram for the starting position but there will then be 10-15 moves that follow, sometimes without any other additional diagrams. I recently bought a mini magnetic chess set that I really recommend: http://amzn.com/B0019F3DN6.

Good packing

Soy un jugador que tengo entre unos 1400 y 1600 de rating en chess.com. Compré este libro por las reseñas y porque he visto que Silman es excelente para transmitir el conocimiento ajedrecístico. Este libro ha rebasado todas mis expectativas. Es justamente lo que yo buscaba, un libro que realmente me ayude a comenzar a ver aquellas cosas que no alcanzo a ver en mis partidas. Quizás cosas tan comunes en jugadores fuertes, pero que yo no podía ver o no era consciente de ello en mis partidas. Silman tiene una forma de transmitir única, didáctica, porque pone posiciones a sus alumnos (de distintos niveles de rating) y los pone a analizar en voz alta, y de esa manera Silman puede darse cuenta en dónde está el error en su forma de pensamiento o de analizar una posición. Eso es lo que me parece que ayuda a abrir el cerebro a jugadores como yo, que tienen rato jugando, pero que no he alcanzado a crecer por falta de ver en el juego cosas que son importantísimas ver. Yo lo recomiendo para jugadores que ya tienen unos 1200 a 1600 de rating (aclaro que me baso en el rating de chess.com).

Masterpiece 👍