Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

It's hard for me to understand why this book is so popular. Maybe it is because this was one of the first imbalances chess books? The book is well written including the part with the first imbalance - minor pieces, where Silman lay out a set of guidelines for the minor pieces. But in the rest of the book Silman does not do this. That's confusing, it's seems like Silman got lazy. Silman "game-comments" are very often not very good and it is often not related to the subject (imbalance) discussed. Often Silman manage to confuse the reader instead of guiding him. An example is the chapter about doubled pawns. Silman tells us that one advantage with doubled pawns is the possibility to attack in the open file, and he gives us some examples. In diagram 109, in the chapter about doubled pawns, this is not a subject at all, Silman tells us that white only could attack on the queenside only if white's pawn-structure on that side was intact. Silman never explain why white couldn't attack in the open b-file (because of the doubled pawns). There are some exercises in this book. What differs between a tactical exercise and a positional exercise is that a tactical exercise very often has very few alternative solutions (often only one), but a positional exercise seldom has just one clear solution. Silman give just one solution to each positional exercise. Positional puzzle book as this book should explain why other alternatives are wrong/less attractive. So in addition to this book you will need a teacher, who can explain why your solution to a puzzle from the book is wrong. This book gives you almost nothing, except listing Silman's imbalances. It doesn't explain deeply how to use the imbalances together. And Silman's imbalances you can get for free from many different Internet sites. An irritating thing about this book, is that many positions are present from the middle of a game after move for instance after white's move number 23. And then the game continues for 15-20 moves. That means that you very often have to set up a specific position on the board, and that is very time consuming. Silman could instead always use complete games. This book was original from 1993. I think that the idea about imbalances is great, and my hope is that the next revision from Silman is more complete and "up to date".