In the 90s when I played a lot of tournament chess, I bought an insane number of chess books. Ideas Behind the Chess Openings is good? sold. Bronstein's Zurich book is a classic? sold.

So I bought books and bought books and never got above uscf 1800, but I sure developed quite a chess library. Recently got divorced and threw away a bunch of bestselling novels, but I couldn't make myself throw away any chess books, even though I haven't played in a tournament since the late 90s.

I like having Fischer's 60 Memorable Games. I like having Tal's Best Games. But it almost seems like a fetish cause I sure haven't read Shirov's Fire on Board recently. Mostly these books just collect dust, but I know I want to keep them till I die.

So this is all perverse, but I'm smiling just typing and thinking about all my chess books. Similar feelings out there about chess books?

Thank you for your post.

It is interesting how you have embedded value in these objects and I thought it poignant that you wrote "...I know I want to keep them till I die". The things of this world have as much value as you give them. Would your attitude change if your chess playing had been cited in your divorce? A lost love of mine cited my poker playing as one of the reasons we broke up and I dumped my whole poker book collection. That was some time ago now.

I am very sorry you got divorced. It is deeply tragic when an understanding between two people dies.

i have this with all books, not just chess ones. i love being surrounded by books, i have bookcases full of expensive leather-bound classics, bookcases full of history, economics, science, spirituality, philosophy, poetry, fiction. i'll never read most of them. and this is after selling off hundreds of books over the past several years.

the only chess books i own right now are Watson's Mastering the Chess Openings, Life of Tal, Silman's Endgame, Fire on Board and Art of Attack. Tal and Shirov are the ****. I'm pretty sure that these alone are plenty to sustain a lifetime of study for a player of my small caliber. But my cart at amazon has all those big Kasparov Great Predecessors books in it, a book on the Colle-Zuckertort System and Dvoretsky's Analytical Manual among others. I keep a pretty healthy wishlist imo.

The only books I've collected more and read less are programming books.

the school where I help out got a massive donation of chess books, maybe 300 of them on all topics, from some guy who had given up chess as a hobby but moved on to aeronautical engineering and Ancient Greek. His kid is in the school but isn't a chess player.

The school is 5 min away, so it's nice to have that as a library.

I have a ton of chess books including of course Fischer's 60 Memorable Games.

I also have an original print of Fischer's FIRST chess book "Bobby Fischer's Chess Games" from like 1958-1959 in good condition. It was a gift. At times I've seen it on ebay for +$300 and I doubt I'd ever sell it, even for $500. However a $1,000 offer would get me thinking..

Don't make me lay down on the couch now!

Yeah, divorce is always sad, but sometimes it's a necessary evil. I don't have a wife right now, but I'll always have Tal and Fischer!

I've gone insane on chess books - three times as many as I bought of the poker ones - and even more hilarious, I've READ three times as many of them cover to cover as I ever did of the poker ones - trying to pick out a new one now of the massive collection -

kinda weird - I just like having lots of books.

RB

Damn, I just listened to your The Fugitive Peace on Rhapsody. I love this hard kind of alt country. This was great, damn. I've started threads in OOT about James McMurtry and HWIII and gotten almost no response. You like Scott Miller?

You ever tour down here in Texas?

hardly doing any gigs outside Minneapolis right now - a friend turned me onto Lucero and i've been getting into them quite a bit - you can listen to all their stuff at luceromusic.com

getting back on thread topic, gotta admit I'm kinda wanting to get the new release of the Nottingham 1936 tournament book that just came out -

RB

If you're trying to sell this music in Minnesota, I wish you all the luck in the world.

land of Romantica and the Jayhawks - Son Volt did their first album here - the town has chops but I have no drive to become a touring artist since my day job pays so much better then that could unless I had a gold record or something -

I'll follow your music.

Chess books are like crack.

Tal Life n Games imo

This was really rude as I read it back. My bad. I was trying to express surprise at you making this music from MN, and it came out bad. I really do like your music.

I have tons of chess books too. For me, collecting chess books is basically another hobby in addition to chess itself.

HU4ChessBooksRoll !?

A good book for 1000-1400 is Best Lessons of a Chess Coach by Sunil Weeramantry

I donated about half that many to my local library when i decided to travel the world. At that time i hadn't studied chess seriously for many years and the books were just sitting in boxes in my basement. I hope some people got some good use out of them.

OT, but that guy is such a giant douche. I was beating Asuka (hikaru's brother, I assume), it was a pawn ending, and the position was equivalent to W: f5 Kf4 a4 b3 B: Kf6 b6 a5. Push the pawn, stalemate the king, queen with mate (among other wins). Not rocket science. For some reason he was playing it out, and right when I stalemated the king on f8, he reached for the clock and stopped it.. didn't tip his king or say anything. I pointed at b6 and quite politely said "you still have a move", since i wasn't sure if he thought I actually stalemated him. Before the kid could even say anything, Sunil jumps in and starts YELLING at me, in the middle of the tournament hall (side event, but still.. games were going on), about how he was obviously resigning, and how stupid I must be to think he wouldn't know what stalemate was, etc. It's the worst display I ever saw in a tournament hall.

I've talked to Sunil away from the chessboard, and he's a nice guy. He just genuinely hates to lose, and that's sometimes reflected in his OTB conduct in a way that is unpleasant.

When I beat him in the World Open one year, I was in a clearly winning position right after making time control with 30 seconds to spare. He made his 41st move quickly. As I (playing black) considered my reply, he pointed to my clock indicating that I was going to flag. I paid no attention and let my time expire, since I knew I had made 40 moves. He then incorrectly claimed a time forfeit (!?). I was very flustered and went to the restroom while the TD rejected his claim. By the time I got back, my clock was pressed and the game continued as if nothing had happened.

Other than this, his behavior throughout the game was very correct.

Yes, have it and like it.

One of my favorites that I rarely seen mentioned is Confessions of a GM by Andy Soltis. Lots of good anecdotes and human being stuff, about how he started, etc. I talked to Soltis a little in Reno one year at the Western States Open, and he couldn't have been nicer.

Yeah I also have a Sunil Weeramantry story where he's acting like described above. I'm not going to share it as this isn't that type of thread.

Regardless of his personality, he puts a lot of honest effort and content into the book and I think it's great for 1000-1400elo

and No he didn't pay me to say that.

That was the very first real chess book (after this is how the pieces move) I ever read. Good book. Entertaining and certainly accessible to low level players.

I fel like the OP absolutely love my chess books even though there is no way I acan ever read them all.

But Fischer's 60 or ALekhine's 1924 New York are just great tohave. I got a book signed by Tal whichwould be the first hting saved in the event of a fire.

I just picked up "Logical Chess: Move by Move" by Irving Chernev.

Its a great read for the intermediate or even the advanced players. Haven't gotten too deep into it but really enjoying it so far.

I like this book a lot. Another good book that's somewhat similar is Euwe's Chess Master vs. Chess Amateur, very instructive.