Amateur's Mind - Terrific! or Terrible!

Is Jeremy Sillman's book "Amateur's Mind" a good book for a 1300 player?

I have heard both good and bad reviews.  I like Silman's writing style, but I am concerned about reinforcing bad patterns.  What's your take on it?

That's interesting.  Is there a strategic work you believe forms a solid strategic basis (without any of that misconception stuff)? or maybe you think chess is too dynamic to be described by a simple system?

As someone a lot closer to 1300 than IM pfren, I'd advise against Silman's middlegame books. 

While his writing is accessable, frankly how to use the information he presents just wasn't clear to me at all. I got a lot more milage out of Yusopov's "Build, Boost, Evolve" series. 

But a big problem with Amateur's mind is actually that his analysis of some of the positions are counter against what the computer will tell you about the same position. And it becomes clear that while one way of playing the position might be to follow his advice, there are equally good ways of playing the position that ignore his advice or even run counter to it. 

If you just read the book superficially, you might get quite a lot out of it. But if you really try to tackle the positions yourself, you'll find that he hasn't always choosen the best example positions to work with.  

I read it when i was 1400 and I have now read it 3 times. I enjoyed it more than HTRYC and that was fantastic too. My favourite chess book.

I found Silman helpful in just giving me new ways of thinking about a position. Whether or not all of his ideas are technically sound, I personally got a lot of value out of his books. 

i'm sure that must be a mistake. i don't think they have been republished in algebraic. i could be wrong, but the books with the same covers have a "look inside" feature on amazon and are in DN.

Nevermind.

I actually bought this one. Couldnt stand it. I actually cant stand any of the articles he writes either. Dunno. Some people like him, but he seems to be a very hit-or-miss author.

Hi Kingpatzer, I've been looking into your suggestion as well.  Some say this series is excellent and I see it has won an FIDE award for books.  I'm hoping you can give me more information on this series.  One reviewer said the content of each book is more or less random in order making it confusing to read through.  Is this your impression?  What books in the series have you read?  Can you provide a specific example of why this book is great?  How has it changed your game?  How is the writing style?  I'm worried about reading pages of massive strings of notation.  When possible I like stories and factoids to keep me interested (and help me remember) the subject matter.  Does Yusupov do anything like this?

Thanks

The Amateurs mind is useful in broad terms, but as has been pointed out, some of Silmans recommended lines aren't actually the best. When I say 'In broad terms' I mean that you can see the same failings repeating themselves over and over again in his students assessment of positions, and I certainly recognised some of their flaws in my own way of thinking.

The major failing that the Amateurs have is that they keep looking for tactical answers to positions where strategy is key. Most positions involve restraining counterplay or taking squares away from your opponents pieces or making advantageous trades to get a positional advantage. Silmans students keep making one move threats that are easily parried and in general have no concept of the overall positional ideas in the position.

A useful book for giving you ideas of how to proceed in those 'nothing to do' positions but the sheer repetition of the same 'mistakes' over and over gets wearing after a time.

BTW, if any of this looks familiar I wrote a similar review of the book on Amazon

These are training books. You're supposed to play through some examples and then try hard to solve (difficult) exercises. It's quite different from Silman's works, where he tries to explain a lot of ideas in words.

While Silman probably makes for easier reading, I think Yusupov is more efficient at making you a stronger player.

Sounds good to me!  So, why aren't Yusupov's books more popular?  I found a website that showed some sample chapters and I like the idea of giving a short introduction to a concept, then doing some practice puzzles.  This is a good learning method for me.  I also like the idea of having each chapter more or less self contained, this makes it easy to pick up and put down as needed.  Anyone know of a good source to purchase these books?  Amazon appears to have limited stock. 

@bruch : they are recent and not well-known. They're also quite difficult, so I think few people have the courage to tackle them.

First, the notion that they're "difficult." I don't think that's fair. 
However, if you jump in to the 3rd level 2 book without working through the first 5, then yes, you'll find yourself struggling.

They do require work though. They present a topic through a number of examples, which Yusupov recommends the reader play out over a real chess board. Then there are 12 questions of various difficulty.  You are asked not merely to find the best move, but to find the LINE including following moves. Yusupov provides a scoring rubric for each question. 

Each chapter takes me about 2 to 3 hours to complete.

They are real work.

But you learn something significant out of each chapter.

And the order does make sense in terms of the difficulty of the topics.

The thing that many people don't know is the order to do the books. They are properly done in the order of "Build," then "Boost" then "Evolve" following the covers in order Orange, Blue then Green.

Some people have tried to do all the "Build" titles first, and quickly found ou that the Blue cover book was much, much harder than the Orange cover.

That is due to the order the English translations have been released, not the order the books should be done in.  

Agreed. They're not difficult, but they are challenging. It takes effort to do what GM Yusupov asks fo the reader. But I have found it to be worth the effort. To be fair, I"m only starting on the third book, so I haven't done the whole series. However, when I started I was rated in the 1200's, I'm not in the 1500's and I just had another 1900 performance this month. As a serious adult player, I think they are the best books I've ever purchased. Only van Wijgerden's "Step" books are close. 

Even the 1st book isn't a beginners one though, an example from the second chapter.

It's not a beginner's book, but once you do the instructional material in the manner the author asks, THEN go on to the problems, most people I think can do ok if they're willing to struggle a little. He does put hard problems in amongst the easy ones, but he doesn't expect you to get all of them right -- that's why there's a scoring rubric for each chapter. 

Thanks guys, you just convinced me to buy the books. The above example is simply astonishing. 

It's true that many of Yusupov's examples are aesthetically very pleasing

Amateur's Mind is a fine book(you will learn a lot from it).If I am you  I will skip it and instead buy How To Reasses Your Chess 4th Edition by Silman.