I was curious what books did bobby fischer use to become as great as he was? For those of you who did not know, Bobby's chess library was sold an an auction in new york for $50 000. But unfortunately i have been unable to contact the winner of the auction. if anyone has any information on the books in his personal library, please leave a comment or send me a message. Thanks

JKO

The authors he cites in My 60 Memorable Games include Botvinnik, Bronstein, R. Byrne, Euwe, Evans, Fine, Freeborough/Ranken, Gligoric, Keres, Kmoch, Korchnoi, Kotov, Lipnitsky, Littlewood, Lombardy, Panov, Simagin, Steinitz, Tarrasch and Trifunovic.  He also mentions the magazines Chess, Chess Life, Chess Review, Deutsche Schachzeitung, the "Russian Yearbook," Shakmatny Bulletin and Shakmaty.

does it give titles?

He mentions a few books by name: Modern Chess Openings, More Chess Questions Answered and Chess Archives.  The Freeborough and Ranken book was Chess Openings Ancient and Modern, and Lipnitsky's book was recently released in English translation as Questions of Modern Chess Theory.  The Panov book might be Comprehensive Chess Openings.  A lot of the collection was probably magazines.

According to Frank Brady in "Bobby Fischer: Profile of a Prodigy", from what he seen, Bobby Fischer had about 400 books, and thousands of magazines.  Most of the content was focused on openings and tournament games.  Endgames and game collections were next in quantity.  Apparently there were almost no books on player biographies, chess history, or chess sets - with the exception of a biography on Lasker by Hannak.

http://books.google.com/books?id=AbcgKnUs0CkC&pg=PA11&lpg=PP1&ots=o-ZRAyswNo&dq=bobby+fischer+profile+of+a+prodigy

Go here and read page 11 and 12.  Should help.

Happy Birthday Mr.Fischer

He read books?  What a nerd.

Indeed! HA! HA! Chess players are like jocks. All muscles and no brains!

Not even in my dreams.

According to the late SM Ken Smith, who was publisher of Chess Digest and a leading book dealer in the '60s and '70s, Fischer ordered lots of books, especially tournament books (which were the primitive form of "databases") and especially those which were hard to get in this country.  He probably didn't find it necessary to keep many of them after reading them, though.

He was also a member of the Manhattan Chess Club which had its own library of books which Fischer "absorbed like a sponge."

The new book "Endgame" says his first book was found in a summer boys camp when he was around 8---Reinfeld's Tarrasch's best games of Chess. Bobby's mother was very good at finding free boys camps every summer for Bobby to attend.

i think u meant the other way round u noob

Fischer just love to read chess books. I have read in Inside Chess Magazine that Fischer(I think it's 1992) bought many Chess Books, and one of the book is about Kasparov..

As well as reading chess books generally, Fischer sought the compilation of "books" containing games of specific players.

Bob Wade compiled such books for Bobby Fischer. These contained the complete games of various opponents who Fischer had to play. Spassky's complete games was compiled for Fischer by Wade. 

The rumour is that the red book Fischer carried around during the 1972 match was actually the Weltgeschichte Des Schachs volume on Spassky.  There is a thread here on this book.

Dear JKO, I'm not sure about the books, but someone who may know what happened to them is John Crumiller, aka "NM ComputoJon" on this site.

Here is the link to a former discussion with him regarding some important chess sets he has collected: http://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-players/new-jersey-man-plays-out-a-dream 

Thanks for that interesting link, Riga