Amateur's Mind vs. How to Reassess your Chess

I've just ordered this book, upon a suggestion. I hope it will be useful for me. Anyone studied this book? I was going to buy "How to Reassess Your Chess, 4th Edition" but someone warned me via PMs and i changed it to this.

The Amateur's Mind: Turning Chess Misconceptions Into Chess Mastery Paperback – October 1, 1999

https://www.amazon.com/Amateurs-Mind-Turning-Misconceptions-Mastery/dp/1890085022

Hi!  I have both the books mentioned.  Enjoy them both.

The main difference between these two books has to be the size!  The Amateur's Mind is a fair bit smaller and covers less material. I actually got through this entire book, while Reassess Your Chess I've tried a couple times, but the size was just too much. 

Because they are both Silman books, they both introduce his strategy to learning through imbalances. Amateur's Mind goes into 7 imbalances while Reassess covers 10.  

Silman talks about how amateurs view positions and their thinking process quite a bit in both books, but perhaps more so in the one titled so!  It is 426 pgs to work through. Reassess Your Chess is almost 700 pgs and each page contains much more. 

I think you made the right choice, especially if not ready to commit to a book the size of the bible Lol 

Amateur's Mind:

Reassess Your Chess

thank you @jay_1944 for taking pictures and sparing time to explain them for me.

I was told that Reassess your chess is for higher rated players and reading something above me wouldn't help me much so bought the other one.

Both is written by Silman, and it feels like one is the eaiser version of the other.

You're very welcome. I would agree with what you've been told. Similar books, but Amateur's Mind would be the easier version. A good place to start for sure. 

Yes, I studied that book about a year ago (about to check it out again, along with other silman names) A highly recommend going through it page by page, starting from the beginning, and to have paper for notes and a chessboard. The exercises and questions sprinkled throughout are a lot more involved you don't see every single move just down the page. 

I have studied both.  I think you made a good choice by starting with The Amateur's Mind.  I also recommend writing down your answers to the exercises and then compare your answers to Silman's.  I have no proof, but I felt at the time that it helped my game.  HTRYC has a lot more material, but it is on the same theme.  You would be fine with either the 3rd or 4th edition of HTRYC.  Those two books are similar, but with a number of differences (4th edition is huge).  There is also the HTRYC Workbook, which I have, but it some reviewers are not positive on it.

Imbalance is very powerful when applied correctly.

Both books are overrated imo. I've never heard a strong player recommends any of Silman's books.

At the OP's 400 rating, "The Amateur's Mind" would be more appropriate.   "How To Reassess Your Chess" is too advanced for players rated below 1500.  I comment on both books here..

Good Chess Books for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/good-chess-books-for-beginners-and-beyond

I'm on page 180 of T.A.M.

It's a very enjoyable read and believe me,I need the advice within....Good luck.

Hi!
It's 2025 and I just wanted to tell you that your comment really helped me!

This comment aged like fine milk.

I recommend Reassess Your Chess to *all* of my students. Just gave a copy to my friend Winston (a kid), along with a CT-Art tactics course and he's enjoying it. I met him 2 months ago at a one day tounament in Tustin and he was rated 1200. Now he's 1500 OBO and his bullet rating online is somtimes higher than mine and his rapid rating has skyrocketed (I already (finally!) got him to stop playing 2 Nc3 every game in 1 d4 d5 or 1 d4 Nf6 systems).

Hey! Thanks Always cool to see an old comment/post still being read.

What a great expression! I'm going to use that in future and pretend that it was me that thought of it.

As far as I know, the "Reassess Your Chess" 4th edition revision basically combines the "Reassess Your Chess Worksbook" book and the older editions of Reassess into one book. So the worksbook is no longer needed. The original version of reassess your chess came out in the 1990's, and the workbook was a "companion" to it.

The Amateur's mind was a simplified version of Reassess your Chess, again, this book came out quite a long time ago, and stopped at second edition (AFAIK). The 4th edition of Reassess Your Chess is basically easy enough for anyone to understand, and has newer theory and explanations, so it's best to just stick with that book. Jeremy's Endgame Course is quite similar--VERY big and bulky, but those pages go *VERY* fast when you actually start reading the book.

(now compare that to Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual, then you'll see exactly what I'm talking about).

Also, don't let the # of pages fool you. Jeremy Silman doesn't write walls of text (unlike John Nunn!) on a page, so those pages go *VERY* quickly.

RIP Silman. His educational works came out during the Golden Age of chess books.