Books by and about Bobby Fischer

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Avatar of OmegaGrandMasterGWiz
pontpierre wrote:

bobby fisher teaches chess has often been recommended for kids and beginners but was it written by bob or not we may never know.

I some times drop in the forums just to talk about fischer, as a matter of fact he did write " bobby fischer teaches chess" He says so himself,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS9n-8bmhV0&t=3484s&ab_channel=chessinkino

at 22:48

"i wrote the book, bobby fischer teaches chess." - bobby fischer

Avatar of mercatorproject
pontpierre wrote:
RussBell wrote:
pontpierre wrote:

from the wikipedia on the book a grandmaster used it to learn chess "Grandmaster Maurice Ashley has said that Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess was his first chess book" there can be a whole lot more grandmasters that learned from the book

"Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess" is a good very first chess book for someone who knows nothing or very little about chess. It was my first chess book as well. In fact, consider that every chess player, including GM's, knew nothing about chess before they learned anything about the game.

it was written by expert teachers after all. wikipedia quotes bobby about his teacher

"Mr. Nigro was possibly not the best player in the world, but he was a very good teacher." – Bobby Fischer

can we vice versa say

"Mr. Fisher was possibly not the best teacher in the world, but he was a very good player"

Fischer was a top class writer and teacher.

Avatar of OmegaGrandMasterGWiz
jameswright80 wrote:

I stumbled upon this forum while looking for Bobby Fischer-related books. While I couldn't find any written by Fisher himself, is there any that he actually wrote? Or if he didn't write any, suggest the best books to study him and his tactics.

Yes, bobby fischer wrote exactly 3 chess books and another book. The book titles he wrote and authored is

1. Bobby fischer teaches chess

2. My 60 memorable games

3. Chess meets of the century

4. I was tortured in the Pasadena jailhouse

He also wrote columns for many chess magazine articles and gave many chess related interviews, he even made videos where he choice his favorite classical games and explained them. John Donaldson made a book where he collected the chess writings of bobby fischer!

Here it is!

https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Annotations-Articles-Bobby-Fischer-ebook/dp/B01F2R7CIS

As far as the best books on bobby fischer. The best book on him even the best chess book is "my 60 memorable games", a very good book that recently came out is "muller bobby fischer 60 best games" , and the best book on his style and play is "bobby fischer his approach to chess". but if you want to get to the essence of his style, he said he learned most and said his favorite player is learn from is wilhelm steinitz! He also said in his older years these are best players in order, 1. Himself, 2. Paul murphy and 3. Jose Capablanca. He did not consider kasparov to be anywhere near the realm of giants. Many people assume Bobby trained the polgar sisters because of photographs they saw of them together playing chess, however I had the opportunity to ask Judith polgar herself! and she said, "no he did not coach us or teach us chess, we only played fischer random maybe once or twice in pairs". so there you have it.

Avatar of chessroboto

Avatar of mercatorproject
chessroboto wrote:

@chessroboto wrote nothing, but I had that book which I lost in a fire some 36 years ago. A cute book. Fischer did not lose all that often.

Avatar of chessroboto

That’s the exact charm of the book - teachable lessons of a few games where Fischer lost, the same way we should learn by analyzing our own losses.

Avatar of vonderlasa

Fischer wrote 2 additional books:

Bobby Fischer’s Games of Chess, 1959

and, posthumously,

”Checkmate, Bobby Fischer’s Boys’ Life Columns”.

Avatar of jameswright80
vonderlasa wrote:

Fischer wrote 2 additional books:

Bobby Fischer’s Games of Chess, 1959

and, posthumously,

”Checkmate, Bobby Fischer’s Boys’ Life Columns”.

Didn't know that! Thanks for sharing!

Avatar of jameswright80
mjeman wrote:

Back on topic. "Checkmate: Bobby Fischer's Boys' Life Columns" is another book with his byline. In addition to the column texts, the editor includes information about Bobby's tournament appearances between the magazines issues explaining the long periods without a column. The columns are from the 1960's and feature tutorials in algebraic notation, which seems early for English language publications.

Thank you for sharing the details here. Would come in handy while making a selection!