Jeremy Silman

Jeremy Silman

Jeremy Silman (born August 28, 1954) is an American International Master of chess. He has won the US Open, the American Open, and the National Open, and was the coach of the US junior national chess team.

Silman has authored over 35 books, mostly on chess but also on casino gambling, and has written articles for chess magazines such as Chess Life and New in Chess.[1] He has also authored many chess mentoring puzzles on the chess.com website.

Silman is the professor in a video chess course produced by The Teaching Company as part of its Great Courses series.

Silman served as a chess consultant on the 2001 Harry Potter film Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone,[2] Monk, and Malcolm in the Middle.

Strategy of Imbalances

In his books, Silman evaluates positions according to the "imbalances", or differences, which exist in every position, and advocates that players plan their play according to these. A good plan according to Silman is one which highlights the positive imbalances in the position. The imbalances are, in rough descending order of importance according to Dana Mackenzie:[3]

Silman's thinking technique

Silman proposes in How to Reassess Your Chess a five-fold procedure that he recommends players to use. This procedure is to be followed after checking for tactical threats for both sides.

  1. Figure out the positive and negative imbalances for both sides.
  2. Figure out the side of the board you wish to play on. You can only play when a favourable imbalance or the possibility of creating a favourable imbalance exists.
  3. Don't calculate! Instead, dream up various fantasy positions, i.e., the positions you would most like to achieve.
  4. Once you find a fantasy position that makes you happy, you must figure out if you can reach it. If you find that your choice was not possible to implement, you must create another dream position that is easier to achieve.
  5. Only now do you look at the moves you wish to calculate (called candidate moves). The candidate moves are all the moves that lead to our dream position.

The list makes sense, but to many it may seem quite advanced. Michael de la Maza,[5] proposed an alternative method using threats and calculation. The work of de la Maza was in turn criticized [6] by Silman himself.

Books

References

  1. Jeremy Silman - Articles New in Chess
  2. Harry Potter's Chess Teacher Robert Coontz, The Muse Fan Page, September 2002
  3. Mackenzie, Dana (May 2008). "Don't Just Reassess Your Chess--IMPLODe It!". Chess Life.
  4. Silman, Jeremy (October 1990). "The Art of Making Plans -- Part V: The Imbalance of Material)". Chess Life.
  5. Rapid Chess Improvement, Michael de la Maza, Everyman 2002.
  6. http://dev.jeremysilman.com/shop/pc/Rapid-Chess-Improvement-p3511.htm
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