The worst chess book I've ever read, and why...

Reinfeld seemed to have the lion's share of American chess books during the early 70s chess fad.  He taught by route in a manner destructive to understanding.

But if you want what is by far the worst chess book ever written by anyone capable of composing a sentence, (I admit the English is easily readable), then The Minor Tactics of Chess by  Young and Howell is champ.

They mathematically prove that a bishop is worth exactly 2 knights and that a bishop and rook are equal. And they claim all knights should always be developed to K2 and Q2 and never to the B3 squares. (I chose the old notation so it applies to both white and black--I hope it is clear).  They used Morphy as an example, and gave him "?" marks liberally whenever he played N-KB3.  His proceeding to win (in their own examples) did not mitigate their zeal.  All bishops should be developed to K3 and Q3 etc regardless of the positions of the other pieces.

When I read it as a child, I screamed to my parents, "How is it possible to write a book on a game one has never played?" Don't know how old I was, but I remember being young enough to expect an answer.

Still like the title.  One has to be fair.

I second this. What a terrible book. The cover is good, and the very last example is pretty good. Other than that, it is just awful, and didn't contribute anything to my chess knowledge.

I must speak up to defend "How to think ahead in chess" by Reinfeld & Horowitz. I thought it did a good job in explaining the ideas behind those particular openings (stonewall & dragon), and showing through a couple of examples how certain themes play an important role in shaping the resulting game. It's got a pretty good name - note that it's not called "a system with the white pieces for the rest of your chess career" or anything. How to think ahead... I think it did a good job at that.

I second ozzie_c_cobblepot's defense of "How to think ahead in chess".  The chapter dealing with the Lasker Defense is quite possibly the "safest" entry-level way of dealing with 1.d4 d5 2.c4 for beginners with lucid ideas (trade pieces willy-nilly and thou shall uncramp!) and really crisp games.

Oh and my vote for worst book ever read would be => Samurai Chess : Mastering the Art of the Mind by Michael Gelb.

 Same Franklin K Young who co-wrote my Minor Tactics of Chess. See above post #26.  If you still have a copy of Grand Tactics, we could compete quote for quote.  See which book could mess up an impressionable student's mind the most.

I believe the worst chess book I've seen is the Batsford Chess Course for Beginner's. The book has several problems that are cooked (have more than one solution).  They tried to explain this as an exercise to see if students could pick out the cooked problems.  IMHO, they were just too lazy to edit the problems before the book went to print.  When they started getting feedback about different solutions to the same problem then they claimed it was intentional.

 I agree with cm Streetfighter The Search for Mona Lisa by Gufeld is an excellent book,perhaps you should re-read it.Then you will see how good this book really is.Certainly not meant for the fire!!!!!

I have over 200 chess books, some are good,some are great and some are not so good.But i would not part with any of them.

I think what can down a chess book is what chess book you read before.

I read GM Steans book "simple chess" a great book,then i read GM Kotovs "how to think like a grandmaster",compared to Steans book it was dull.(both books covered similar content)I could very have mark that as one of the worst chess books i have read.Yet it is a chess classic to many.

Well said.

I seemed to have ruffled the ire of the natives. If I want the Mona Lisa I will go to the Louvre. I own over 2500 chess books and I still say Gufeld is garbage. I would rather read every Bill Wall annotation from all of his books before receiving a free copy of MLisa, smile or not. Why not roast another, how about Paul Motwani?

Which book do you have?  I couldn't tell if you were replying to my origianl post or some one else's...

I think My 60 Memorable Games is great when I use it to analyze one of Fischer's games but as a read it isn't nearly as good as Tarrasch's 300 Games or Kere's books of his own games.  It is a bit dry.

I am not ready for My System so I don't really know but I have looked at it and the writing seems a little too clever for itself.  I really liked Stean's Simple Chess and my next strategy book would be either Silman's Amateur Mind or something else of that ilk.  (long way off..I gotta get my tactics and endgames together!)

For worst book I would nominate a book that a lot of people like:

A First Book of Morphy by Frisco Del Rosario.  A LOT of people love this book but it almost made me quit chess.  I thought that if all game collections were this badly writen and uninformative then I would be better off playing poker.  I am glad I didn't quit but this book is droll AT BEST.

Two things:  first, Bobby Fischer teaches chess was my first chess book. I got it when I was about 11.  For me it was an excellent book as it illustrated most of the necessary tactics required for simple middle game attacks and combinations.  For beginners it was really excellent.  My undertanding is that he actually contributed a small but significant amount to the book.  I'm getting that tidbid from Andrew Soltis who says so in in his book "Rediscovering Bobby Fischer".   So, BF teaches...is a chess primer and should be viewed in that context. 

However, that piece of absolute dog vomit, "how to think ahead in chess" does not indiate that it is a primer to be directed towards beginners.  It does not teach you how to "think ahead" in chess.  It, rather, teaches you (regarding the stonewall), ONE simplistic sacraficial attack against the UN-fianchettoed king side castled king.   The book is really garbage.  How can any book titled "how to think ahead" be defended when it does know such thing?  How can any book advocating the "stonewall attack" not even mention the slim possibility that black might try a KB finchetto defense?   Really just super limited and lame.  I'm sorry you'll never convince otherwise. 

Anthony, What are basing your notion that Fischer had nothing to do witht that book? I'm certain that you're wrong. 2 things, first I recall seeing an interview on  youtube with him where he says something about the book, sort of dismissive since it's for beginners, but accepting the "compliment" of his book being popular.  But, more to the point, what kind of proof do you have that he had nothing to do with the book?  I've got Soltis, in print, in a book he's had published saying quite the opposite of you.  For me Soltis is a Grandmaster who actually new Fischer and has a lot of credibility. You on the other hand are a guy who likes to chime in here in forums.  Where's your cred? 

Now, you may be confusing storys.  Fischer did have disputes (shocked I tell you I'm shocked!) with his publishers on his first crack at his "60 memorable games", which at the time was a book of 50 of his games.  It was all done, the book had been typeset and was ready to go to press and fischer suddenly forbid it from going to press. 

OH yeah, another horrible book... Reinfeld "golden treasury of chess".  More like a steaming pile of games with lots of mistakes in the diagrams and notes...

He said it himself.

http://www.heretical.com/miscella/fischer.html

Vulgar Language Ahead!

He expresses it in a bigoted and racist way but he does say it.

Wow, he's so angry, it's horrible to be in that condition -- he's saying hideous stuff but you actually have to have compassion for him -- that's a soul in pain.

But he only mentions the cd-rom of Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess. Not the book. itself.

Although I don't think My system is bad, it seems quite overrated to me. Many poeple say it's what helped them get to the top but I dunno it's kind of boring and I think people are better off with the easier to digest, but no less content in silman's strategy books.

My vote goes to "Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess." First of all, the book has nothing to do with Bobby Fischer whatsoever, they basically stole the guy's name without his permission; and second, it doesn't have anything else to offer than some back rank mates in 2.

Edit:

Hey, wow, this has been mentioned several times, I posted this without even reading those! I looked at the link AnthonyCG has given, and I remember listening to the audio version of it. It in fact doesn't say anything about the book in the text, only mentions the CD-Rom, maybe my memory has played some tricks on me. But I seriously doubt Fischer would agree to being part of such horrible book from a chess point of view.

Though I've recommended it in the past, I'm convinced that My System is the Blade Runner of chess books.  I can see how it was pretty revolutionary in its time; the general approach it espouses (conservative, positional chess) is about as far from romantic chess as you can get.

Despite that, it hasn't aged well, and compares poorly to its successors.  One can't get around the fact that some of Nimzovich's concepts and explanations just don't really make sense (when was the last time you heard a modern GM talk about overprotection?), and that many of the annotations are weak.  My System may have been a great and necessary first step towards a deeper chess understanding, but half a dozen writers since then have gone better by taking that modern understanding and refining it into a more concise and accurate form.

 In reply to post#7 Hartston's How To Cheat At Chess was the book I meant.

Actually, overprotection happens in many GM games, but they don't really call it that. Like in the french how often does white put the rook on the e file anticipating ...f6 to open up lines or cover the e5 square for a knight to make ...f6 less desirable? But I agree my system hasn't aged well. Probably at the time it was revolutionary to even strong players seeing this stuff for the first time.

"but half a dozen writers since then have gone better by taking that modern understanding and refining it into a more concise and accurate form."

Yeah, exactly. The modern books are much easier to read and tell you the same stuff, and it's more up to date, as today the rubinstein is not thought of as a refutation of the french, and IQP strategies for white are more aggressive now. Nimzo's writing style just feels dull as do the annotations, but not that it's his fault since it's an old book.

Thanks OP for comments about "How to think ahead in chess."  I bought it used several years ago and tried to implement it playing computer chess.  However, the strategy it advocated always broke down shortly after play began.  However, the idea of having only a couple of sure-fire strategies for winning kind of enamoured me.  So I have periodically taken it out and tried to memorize the moves.  I won't do that anymore.