Creative way of buying chess books

Like some of my fellow passionate chess players I have the tendency of always wanting to have the latest and greatest chess book handy.  But let's be honest, the trouble with this approach is that one ends up buying a whole bunch of books, never finishing any of them, because almost every second day there is a forum post recommending some book that might not be in your collection!

To remedy myself from this, I only try and use my small change to buy chess books.  I will collect the coins in a jar and accumulate them over a couple of months.  I then order ONE chess book that I like.  It does take some time before the small change is enough to buy another one, so that gives me time to work through the book I have at the time.  So far my money has been well spent on Susan Polgar's tactics books.  I had to put a bit extra for Jeremy Silman's End Game book.

Earlier this year, two jars of small change went to Jeremy Silman's "How to Reassess your Chess".

It's that time again, but I am in a bit of a dilemma.  I haven't quite got past the first 50 pages of Jeremy's book.  So I've decided to use this jar to contribute towards another year of Diamond Membership on the greatest chess website in the world!

See you on the other side my chess friends!

Good idea !

well done good idear two many people buy chess book after chess book and think they are going to be masters.i was one of them people. but with not having the money to spend on books make good use of ones you have got and read all the way from start to finish there is always something that can be learnt from a book.i will start saving my pennys also for capablancas book move by move. price £16.99 should have buy x mas.

At its peak, I had roughly 50 books in my collection - though none were bought thinking they'd "make me a master." Its kind of its own self-perpetuating cycle that has no really logical rationale behind it.

Though I did read them; or rather, I did read many of them (about a dozen before I stopped playing in '04), and may have eventually gotten to the point where I'd have read most of them, but I lost them in a move during my hiatus from chess.

But the addiction, I've learned, is easy to resume again - all it takes is a return to the game. After doing that last month, I'm up to 16 books already (having had to start from zero) with 2 more on order from Amazon.

I am putting them to use, though, even though the speed of my purchasing exceeds the speed of my ability to work through them. My method is to work through a tactics book by solving X number of problems per day (currently 25/day from Polgar's Chess Tactics for Champions), and work through 1-3 annotated games from one of my game collection books. I'm also working through Silman's Endgame course, although I only work on that one a couple days a week.

Just dropping by sir....to wish you continued success in your chess!!!!

There should be an ocean of chess books though which one could sail and pick up books at will.

Thank you Sal!  We shall meet again soon my friend...

LOL!   Well said JoseO  

About the photo, I took it just before I started counting my coins into bags.  Thought it would add a nice touch to the thread.

I am barely starting on book number one...i already know how you feel! LOL

Same here, I probably had 40 before I took a break from chess, now I am already up to 60+ I think. Some are player game collections, so if I haven't read over all of Tal's games it's not like they are going to go bad. Same for endgame manuals. Same for tourney collections like Zurich.

Don't buy opening theory books, biggest wastes of funds ever.

Some opening books are decent. Just scan them well and read some reviews first. Not every opening book is trash. Just look at some of the GM Repertoire books...

You are missing the point. 99% of chess players would improve much faster if they focused on:

a) their endgame skills - often completely lacking,

and

b) Their middlegame tactics, and strategy in static positions.

It takes, at most, a couple weeks of study to come up with a playable system for White and Black - either main line or not. It's the understanding of how to play afterwards that stops people from becoming 1600 or 2000 or whatever. Knowing the 'hot' move vs the Najdorf or Slav is useless - because opening fashions will change often before you get to play it anyway.

It's much more important to know why White should play Bc4 in response to Black's Qa5 after White's Bg5 in the Najdorf than to have it memorized which tells you nothing. Yeah, you memorized one more move in a vastly complex opening, but in all the other systems you never play those two bishop moves together - 'mixing systems' as they say.

Some of the new opening books do just that: not simply feed you a move, but explained to you why its played. My "Nimzo-Indian Move by Move" by Emms takes exactly that approach, so you get not only an opening book, but a collection of fully annotated games centered around the thematic opening.

A good place to pick up used chess books at a pretty good price is half.com.

Many, many books are just a dollar or two.  Of course, you also have to pay a few dollars to the seller for shipping charges, but even with that, the total price paid is still often less than the price of a cup of coffee.

I recently purchased 16 different chess books to add to my collection, on half.com, all purchased the same evening, from 16 different sellers!  (I was in a chess-buying mood that night, I suppose.)  The total price I paid for all 16 of these books was $75 and some change, which is only $4.68 per book.  That's a great deal to me.  The entertainment value I will get from each book, during the time I will own it, is worth much more than $5.00 to me.  (And someday, years from now, I will probably sell it for at least that amount.)

Checkout was painless and quick.  After browsing many of the titles/descriptions and then adding each one to my "cart," I paid via my credit card that half.com has on file, for all of them at once.  That's it.  Half.com/eBay will then take my money and allocate it to the different sellers.

I'm still working my way through all of the titles available for sale.  (There are a couple hundred pages of chess books, with about 20 titles per page.)

I estimate at least half of the books in my collection were purchased on ebay, half.com or at used book stores.

One problem... with my ever-growing collection, I will soon need another bookshelf to store them all!  (I guess that's a problem worth having.)

I need to update this photo.  I've acqired a dozen or two more books since it was taken:

http://www.edcollins.com/chess/chess-books.htm

BWAHAHAHA!   In our country the cops are the one's holding up stores.

WOW!  What an impressive collection Mr. Collins.  If I may ask, how many have you read?  Nice trophy collection as well...

Thanks.  I have more trophy not seen on that bookcase, because it's too tall... it doesn't fit!

I've read parts of all of the books.  Whenever I get a book I read as much of it as I can, play through many of the games.  I often read and then re-read chapters that interest me, etc.  But on the other hand, many, many books contain chapters and games that I haven't read yet at all.

Sometimes I'll just pull out a book at random, and a chapter at random, and read it and play through the games.  I'm one of the few who enjoys studying chess as much, if not more, than actually playing chess.

I recently just purchased another 16 used books on half.com.  That will put me at 470 books, I believe.  After I receive all of them, I want to take another photo. 

I should reach 500 books in another year or two.

I notice you have the Pal Benko book. May I ask how you rate it?