Opinions about buying chess books

You mean the one by Matanovic, Chess Informant ?  These five books are for sale in the Netherlands, see www.schaakboek.nl under "openingen algemeen" 

For the other question, see your original forum !  ( Why two ? ) 

Look online, reviews etc. Not hard.

Buying chess books is an addiction for which no cure is presently available.  I refuse to be a co enabler.  Good luck with your sad sickness...

I can quit anytime I want...I just downloaded a Google Books copy of Chess Endings for Beginners, by Blake (circa 1900), reviewed on Ziryab's blog.   I'm sick I tell ya, please help me...!!!

You have to be careful though because some Authors work together to pump up each others books on what appear to be 'objective' review sites..I think we all know which ones I am talking about

@OP, I'm not sure why you started three threads asking the same question...(I guess we haven't given the right answer yet?)

Baddogno's advice in one of the other threads was good.

Heisman's list of recommended books:  http://home.comcast.net/~danheisman/Events_Books/General_Book_Guide.htm

Also, Heisman's Novice Nook, "Chess Books and Prerequisites":  http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman06.pdf

Also, Heisman's Novice Nook, "An Improvement Plan": http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman19.pdf

I don't know...Which ones are you thinking of?

Nice trolling attempt.  No soup for you! Next!

Well Amazon is an obvious target but also the whole Silman - Watson-Donaldson cartel is very incestuous. Chesscafe also remarkably finds every book they look at to be at least a 4 star review, nothing to do with the fact they have a bookstore attached to the site of course.

Thank you guys.

I forgot about Amazon - You're right about that one. It's too easy for fake reviews to get posted or reviews by every 12-year-old who just read the book.

I somewhat agree that the Silman site reviews tend to have an enthusiastic slant, but that might be because they tend to review the books they like and not review the bad ones. They have panned some books. I still find Silman's reviews useful.

With ChessCafe, it might depend on the reviewer, but generally they do a good job with reviews. A few of the reviewers do seem to be a little wishy-washy, but they have panned a good number of books. I think ChessCafe changed ownership recently; I don't know if that will change the tone of the reviews. The ChessCafe reviews tend to be the most detailed, and I trust the ChessCafe reviews more than the others.

I haven't read every chesscafe review but 3 stars is absolutely the lowest score I have ever seen and only rarely. Silman went up in my estimation when he reviewed Move First Think Later by Willie Hendricks and gave it a buy recommendation even though Hendricks trashed Silmans own books  What I was referring to is the fact that Silman, John Watson and John Donaldson are actually business partners but still review each others books which not surprisingly all get glowing reviews..

Regarding ChessCafe, I think the star ratings are a recent occurrence, and most of the pans I'm thinking of predate the star system. To be honest, for the last year or two, I seldom look at the new reviews. Maybe the reviews have gotten more lenient recently, or maybe they're only reviewing good books.   I'll try to start reading the reviews every month to see if I think the pans are becoming less frequent.

Openings

-FCO- Fundamental Chess Opening

Tactics

- Chess Tactics For Champion by Polgar

Strategy

-Winning Chess Strategy by Seirawan

Endgame

- Pandolfini's Endgame Course or Winning Chess Endings by Seirawan

Well, I disagree with your belief, at least concerning ChessCafe in the past when Taylor Kingston was reviewing books. However, it's possible that it was a case of Taylor being a one-man wrecking crew, idk.

Times have changed, though. Taylor is no longer reviewing books there, and ChessCafe is under new ownership. (Hanon Russell is no longer the owner.) I'll spend some time in the next days and/or weeks to review the recent reviews (pun intended) and get back to you.

I'm not just arguing for argument's sake; I really am interested to know if there's been a fundamental change in the reviewing standards there.

I didn´t liked the Polgar book at all. It doesn´t explain almost anything, it just have like 3 o 4 pages of explanations per topic. It´s a very bulky book, but just because it has a very big font and it´s written in one column.

I have liked much more "A course in Chess Tactics" by Dejan Bojkov (the chapters that I have finished so far are ok).

Quick question, totally tangential... Chess Tactics for Advanced Players is available from Ishi Press on Amazon. Whenever I have "looked inside", there are Japanese (I presume) characters displayed at the top and bottom of the page. Do these appear in the printed book too?? I have been put off buying any book from Ishi Press for that reason.

I would be leery of amazon.com reviews since a great many of them are written by folks who either just skimmed the book, read and studied a 1/4 of it, or did not even read it at all. The best way is to find what books suit your current level of development and see if you can find them at a local bookstore. This way you can give the book a good look over and make a decision.