Rating: 
Summary: Excellent for Beginner / Intermediated Player !
Review: .
In this book Silman describes the Psychological aspects of the game, teaching how to master your Strategy:1. Learn to recognize weakness/strengths (yours and your's opponent).
2. Learn to do a plan based on these imbalances.
3. Make a plan and follow through it, while covering your weakness (the ones that really matters!). The book is a set of several games that he played against ranked players from 1000 to 2000. While playing, his opponents are describing their plans (and the imbalances and threats they are actually visualizing). Silmans shows the aspects of the Amateur's Mind:
1. Forgetting to make a plan, and doing a lot of calculations.
2. Leaving the plans behind, after a small threat of your opponent.
3. Being frightened by improbable threats... (and again forgetting your plan).
And so forth... It is a real good book for those interested in the strategy the game has. After reading this book, playing chess has become a lot of easier (no such calculations! only the necessary ones), visualizing the board into sections to play (Center, Queenside, Kingside), the role of each piece (Knights, Rooks, Bishops etc), accessing weakness/strengths and finally making a reasonable plan based on what he says "What the board calls for , not what I want!!!". ...
Rating:
Summary: Introductory book on how to play strategically
Review: After doing some tactical training for a while, I decided that I needed to figure out what to do on the turns in which no glaring tactical shot was available. After reading a ridiculous amount of reviews for various strategy books, I settled on this one, in the hopes that it could give my game some purpose. This book exceeded all of my expectations. The purpose of the book is primarily to emphasize the following, in order: 1-You need to have a plan.
2-Your plan needs to be specific and concrete.
3-Plans are implemented by being broken down into component parts If you buy into (1) and (2), you'll appreciate that this book is geared towards explaining in very direct terms how to apply (3). Rather than being lost in a mental fog, the reader is encouraged to break down the position systematically; seems obvious, but before this book I had no idea how to do so. I have two caveats regarding this book. First, Silman never really mentions at what point in his thinking process one should look for tactical opprotunities. I found this to be the only unclear part of this work. Second, this is not an advanced book on strategy. If you are rated over 1800, you could get a better bang for your buck elsewhere. All in all, an excellent piece of work that gives loads of *applicable* knowledge, a rare feat in a chess book.
Rating: 
Summary: Gee...I hope the readers don't think badly of me...
Review: Easy read and comprehensive. It discusses about the developmental stages of awareness in different level ranges of what players see and don't see to progress in one's ability. However, I must comment on the statement Mr. Silman made on page 16, "I hope the reader won't think me overly harsh for my comments in this game. I was not criticizing the man, just his erroneous thinking process..." BUT YOU WERE OVERLY HARSH MR. SILMAN and YOU WERE CRITICIZING THE MAN. EVERY ONE OF THEM. I thought the players did very well for their rating. e.g. For someone at 1000 rated to be able to rationalized the way he did (perhaps, not with such chess "WISDOM" as Mr. Silman), but nonetheless still come up with an explanation for 26...Qc6 (p 15) that was more than adequately sensible for his level is to be commended, not rebuked.
Rating:
Summary: Getting into the student's mind!
Review: I found The Amateur's Mind difficult to read because it's full of Silman's ego stroking comments. The book is bloated with name dropping and his self indulging rants. I also feel sorry for his students that were used by him in his book. He shows no respect for them and appears to enjoy ripping them to shreds. Personally I will never buy another Silman book!
Rating: 
Summary: Silman's ego is the size of Titanic
Review: I found The Amateur's Mind difficult to read because it's full of Silman's ego stroking comments. The book is bloated with name dropping and his self indulging rants. I also feel sorry for his students that were used by him in his book. He shows no respect for them and appears to enjoy ripping them to shreds. Personally I will never buy another Silman book!
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Summary: Silman really likes himself
Review: I found this book to overall be quite good and I have already seen improvements in my play. Silman, however, wastes a lot of space insulting his students play and occasionally their mental state rather then analytical breakdowns of their mistakes.
Rating:
Summary: Definitely helped to improve my play
Review: I had read wonderful reviews about Silman's other book, "How to Reassess Your Chess" ("HTRYC"), so I purchased it. Within a week after that I was told that I should read "Inside the Amateur's Mind" ("ITAM") first. So I put HTRYC down and picked up ITAM. I was skeptical at first. After all, who cares what goes through a patzer's head in a game -- I want to learn from masters and grandmasters. However, it was scary to see how similarly I incorrectly analyzed a given position or manner of executing a plan with the amateurs. These mistakes are vividly pointed out and practical advice for analysis and planning is presented. Silman's method is based on understanding the imbalances inherent in every position. He gives 7 elements to analyze: (1) material; (2) minor pieces; (3) pawn structure; (4) files and weak squares; (5) space; (6) development; and (7) initiative. I have started forcing myself to break down the elements of a position and develop a plan dictated by those elements. Silman demonstrates how even seemingly minor differences like the battle between a bishop and a knight can consume the entirety of a middlegame plan. I have already seen the benfits of this thinking method. For instance, I recently annotated one of the test positions at the end of ITAM (an excellent feature of the book BTW) and compared it with Silman's notes and found that I was 70-80% accurate in making my assessments -- a big improvement for me. He also emphasizes an attacking mentality (seize the initiative! Make you opponent react to your threats!) which has helped my game already. It is also very instructive to see the way Silman defeats amateurs who are given superior or winning positions. I don't play against GM's so it is instructive to see how to take apart a C through Expert player who misahandles a good position. After completing the test positions, I am going to spend a month or two sharpening my tactics so they can catch up with my new-found positional understanding. After that, I will read ITAM again to see what jewels of wisdom I missed (or need re-emphasized). This book definitely deserves being re-read. Two notes of criticism. It is one thing to get a strong positional advantage and develop the correct plan, it is another cash it in to a victory. There are several times throughout the book where Silman shows how an Amateur chose the incorrect plan but does not show the technique of carrying out the correct plan. In fairness, he usually does demonstrate the technique of the correct plan, but not always. It is frustrating to look at a position and say, "okay, I see what the incorrect plan is, but how do I impliment the correct one?" and then get no explanation. Also, there are a number of typographical errors. Although I understand the third edition is a vast improvement over earlier editions, they still creep up with regularity. Despite these criticisms, I highly recommend this book. Much more accessible to the under-expert player than a number of other books. Once I feel I have truly mastered the lessens in ITAM, I will tackle HTRYC. However, there are a lot of lessens to tackle, so it might be a while.
Rating: 
Summary: A Book About Weak Players' Weak Play
Review: I own 3 books by J. Silman (Reassess Your Chess and the matching workbook in addition to this one). The Ameteur's Mind does not measure up to the other two. The book covers many of the same topics as the other two books but waters it down by having the reader go through many games played by amateurs in an attempt I suppose to help the reader identify with the faulty thought processes of these low level players. Unfortunately this does little to really focus on improving my game. The main problem I found is that too much time is spent on wading through others' mistakes that do not apply to my own game. Much of the material I found irrelevant and the book could be half as long as it is. I suggest buying the other 2 Silman books which are very good and you won't be missing anything by not having this one.
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Summary: Just another IM/GM that's arrogant
Review: I totally agree with the other reviewers that said Silman is too harsh on amateurs. He takes the same arrogant, lofty, and unaccessible attitude that many college professors do. If they can't explain something in 5 seconds, they get frustrated and blame it on the student. Yasser Seirawan is much more patient and objective about training lower-ranked players. I suggest you buy his Winning Chess Tactics, and Winning Chess Strategies, instead. Also, I'm a firm believer in reverse analysis, which many top players absolutely disdain. Their argument is: "how can you say that the resignation on move 41 occurred because of a move on 25? There are a million possible moves between those two!". Yes, there are a million POSSIBLE moves, but there were only 32 moves THAT WERE ACTUALLY PLAYED. If an amateur (or even a letter-rated player of A, B, C, D) performs reverse analysis on their games, it will help more than any book will. You need to know WHY your "attacking" pawn move at move 15 led to a weakened pawn structure that your opponent took advantage of at move 23, and won the game on move 32. Write down your moves, replay the game forward, then at the loss move, put the pieces and pawns back in reverse order. Then you will see why you lost. And that's not an arrogant way to teach, either.
Rating:
Summary: Start here after you stop making major blunders.
Review: Master-Master games can be inscrutable, especially modern ones. Amateur-Amateur games are laughable. Amateur-Master games are the most instructive, and the hardest to find. I have read, and I firmly believe, that you learn most from playing against someone just a bit above your own level, along with post-game analysis and advice from a master-level coach. But that can be expensive. So I think your best bet is to study games between a master and player who is just a bit better than you are. That's where this book is perfect! Silman plays against several different students , all beginning from the same position (often derived from a grandmaster game). He lists their respective ratings, so you can find the one closest to you. There are only a handful of other books which show Amateur-Master games (Chess Master v. Chess Amateur, a great book in old-style Descriptive Notation; Grandmaster Meets Chess Amateur; Improving Annotator by Heisman; any Paul Morphy collection; and simul. games as in Unknown Capablanca or Alekhine in Europe or the Americas) and they typically do not tell the rating of the Amateur or his thought process. Silman records the player's comments for each move, then adds his own. You learn exactly what you've been doing wrong, and you learn it in the best possible way: from somebody ELSE's mistakes! I could go on and on about this book, but I'll just say this: If you're over 1300 USCF, buy this book and study the games by the player just above you. Return to it everytime your rating rises 200 points. Believe me; it will (if you keep practicing tactics).
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