Worst Chess Books!

Yes.

my two contenders for worst book ever are:

1) Why You Lose at Chess by Tim Harding

Harding's book is one of the least educational books I have ever read on any subject.  The explanations were vapid and incomplete.  And those were the good ones!

2)  Openings for Amateurs by Pete Tamburro

My displeasure with this book may have more to do with the back cover blurb from the publisher.

They make a big deal about the Opening Primer section of the book and that was pretty bad.  Some examples had decent explanations but most of them did not.

The "repertoire" in the back is a little better but still not very good at explaining the openings.

Honorable mention for worst booke ever is the vastly overrated snooze fest:  A First Book of Morphy.

Somehow made Morphy's games boring and uneducational all at once!

Now THAT sounds like a real achievement.

... in a purely negative sense, of course.

I suppose a book that is good for one player may not be right for another. Still, I am a little surprised to see Keres' "Practical Chess Endings" on someone's worst book list.  Personally, I would put it in my top 10 chess books of all time.  It's a very good book for a mid- to stronger-level club player looking to improve his/her theoretical endgame knowledge and understanding to the master level.  Unless someone is planning to be a chess professional, I don't think they would need anything else.

If the book had been titled, "Bobby Fischer Teaches Back-Rank Mates", it would be a better book.

WTH is this???

I'm guessing the reviewer regretted that he couldn't give it zero stars.

I read this book when I was 7.  There's no doubt in my mind that this book actually improved my game far more than any other book.  Maybe that's because there's a ton of room for improvement at that age, but maybe not.  

This visual style is engaging for youngsters in a way that other chess books definitely are not (my father had a Reinfeld book as well, and I hated that book at 7).  More importantly, it teaches beginning players how to mate, and it does so backwards, like learning simple endgames and moving to more complex ones.  Find the mate in one.  Find the mate in two.  Three, four, five...by the end you can easily see thematic mates of half a dozen moves or more.

It changed me from a 7-year-old that could beat 10-year olds with knight forks and discovered checks to a player that could beat 15-year-olds playing the KID ;).  It teaches you to go for mate, how to recognize the elements of a winning sacrificial combo, etc.  It teaches you to construct/build mates.

I distinctly remember playing for 3rd place at a tournament that year, and having to figure out OTB how to force a win with K+2R vs. K+R (it had never come up before), and that I would never have figured out how to convert the win without the principles I learned from Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess.

There's no way this can be considered the "worst" chess book.  For the correct target audience, it's arguably the best book out there.

[COMMENT UNDELETED]

Agree.  I'm going through this book with someone to teach them chess.  It's amazingly good.  I had my doubts because of comments about it "only teaching back rank mates".  It's so much more than that.  Might be one of the best beginning chess books ever.

BFTC isn't one of the worst books - not by a long chalk. I also think it's a pretty decent beginning chess book. I like the "programmed learning" format. But it is quite limited in the type of material covered. Is there anything about the endgame? Openings? The full range of tactics (including forks)? Counting? Elementary strategy?

This kind of question turns out to be pointless, as is the analogous question about the worst film ever made, because the worst of anything is usually so obscure that the person asking the question has never heard of the examples that responders give. Also, "best" and "worst" have to be defined for a good answer.

Having said my preliminaries, the book that came to mind when I read this thread was one I saw in a local library called "Chess for Tigers." Twice I picked it up and couldn't even figure out what it was about. One chapter was on trying to win by swindling. Two chapters went on for so many pages about Tigers and "Heffalumps" that I didn't have the patience to read through the paragraphs even to understand the point. The author seemed to be bragging about wins at his local chess club so I thought maybe the book was written only for them. Another chapter promoted a philosophy that is exactly opposite of the advice I've heard, since it said to play against the person and not against his/her moves, so I wrote off the book as ridiculous and unintelligble. I did finally check out the book just to try to figure out its point, and it did have some good advice for club players, but I still don't like its writing style or structure.

----------

(p. 9)
      2 Play the man--not the board

   Only an automaton plays the same way against every opponent. The
practical chess-player looks out for the strengths and weaknesses of his
opponents, and goes out of his way to capitalize on the weaknesses.

(p. 42)
      5 How to catch Rabbits

   Do you know Tigers catch Rabbits? Do they rush after them
and tear them limb from limb? Or do they stalk them through the bush before
finally creeping up on them when their resistance is low?

   The trouble with the first method is that even Rabbits have sharp teeth,
and when cornered can be surprisingly ferocious. So a sensible Tiger takes
no chances--he patiently stalks his Rabbit, and when the poor thing makes
a bolt for freedom, he pounces and kills it swiftly and easily.

(p. 51)
      6 How to trap Heffalumps

   Heffalumps are mighty strong--stronger than Tigers. On open territory
a Tiger doesn't stand much of a chance against a Heffalump; he can't even dig
a Very Deep Pit to trap it, because Tigers aren't much good at digging.
What he can do, however, is to entice the Heffalump on to swampy
ground and hope it falls into a bog and gets sucked underground by the
quagmire. The only trouble is that Tigers are even more prone to getting
stuck in bogs than Heffalumps are, and they're not much good at
struggling out of them. But what is the poor Tiger to do, when faced with
a big strong Heffalump? He can put up a fight neither on open plains nor
in the jungle; so his only chance is to head for a swamp and hope that the
Heffalump gets stuck before he does. If the Heffalump had any sense he
would keep well away from the swamp, but Heffalumps, in spite of their
great strength, are not always sensible when it comes to staying away from
swamps.

(p. 66)
   I'm one of the luckiest players around, and a notorious swindler. When
I get a lost position, my opponent always seems to blunder and allow me
to escape. Well, that's not quite true, since I do lose sometimes, but I feel
fully qualified to initiate you into the art of being lucky, and shall have no
compunction in using my own games to illustrate how it's done.

Webb, Simon. 2005. Chess for Tigers. London: Batsford.

wow

 "Bobby Fischer teaches chess" was horrible, and I say that because there's some bot censoring what it really is.

5 years later...

I am pleasantly surprised at how often puzzle rush positions going well into the high 20s to mid 30s are puzzles that I solve purely based on having read Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess.

lol

Re   Practical Chess Endings by Keres.

This was one of the first chess books I purchased many years ago. I had no chess club, anyone with chess experience or a useful Internet. Struggled with it a while but eventually it gathered dust on my shelf.

Years later found Pandolfini's book in a used book store and got a copy of Muller & Lamprecht. These were eye-openers. On the first page of the Pawn chapter is a clear diagram of the Rule of the Square. A few pages later in M&L is a discussion of Key Squares.  Pandolfini called them "critical squares" but I believe most authors call them Key Squares.

Nowhere in Kere's book are Key Squares mentioned, and even as fundamental a concept as the Rule of the Square is missing.  If there, they're certainly hard to find.  On page 10 of my edition are a few feeble paragraphs about "related squares". This is not just an issue of terminology ; the ideas are not developed.

Paul Keres was a great player & one of the finest men to become Grandmaster, but I cannot recommend this book for beginners. Everything in it may be correct, but it is not a clear explanation for someone starting out.

Like the West applied Western Christianity to chess in chess pieces (King Cross, Bishop Mitre) ? 🤣😂🤣

I’m not wild about Keres’ “Practical Chess Endings”, but it’s not a bad book. I’ve known several strong players who credited it with helping them to improve their endgame technique.