When Did you Buy Your First Chess Book?

I was just curious about chess books, then it got me thinking.

What was your very first chess book?

At what rating + time did you buy it? (And did it help (points-wise?)?)

And why did you buy it? (did you hit a brainblock?)

Mine was The Mammoth Book of Chess by Burgess, Nunn and Emms. It certainly helped and I still go through those games here and again. The first chessbook I read was Bobby Fischer teaches chess (or something similar) that my father had bought when he was young, but had never filled up. I found it from our library and filled it up when I was six. It's long lost now mind that...

what do you mean by "filled up". Sounds like a good recommendations, what about the other questions' answers?

I was about 12 or 13,  I knew how the pieces moved.

Then I bought Horowitz's Golden Treasury of Chess, and figured out how to read descriptive notation, although think it might have contained an explanation.. that was way back in the 60's.

My first chess book was "Chess for Fun and Chess for Blood," by Edward Lasker, published in 1942. The jacket is torn but I still have the durned thing. I also acquired chess books by Reuben Fine and Capablanca published in that year. I was eight and just learning the game. I have loved it ever since, and want to thank chess.com for offering such a rich bonanza of helpful and entertaining features.

My first book was MCO 8th ed.  I was 14, just learned the game, and the better players said "buy MCO".  Stupid  choice.  The next book was worse--How To Think Ahead In Chess by Horowitz & Reinfeld.  For years I played the Stonewall instead of the open game or studying tactics.

Interesting, this is what I worry about too.

I also noticed that if you don't find a book with an online database that has all the games available, it will be a dry and boring read because you'll have to visualize the games in your head (and after 2 hours of doing this the other night, I really hated my own book).

All my early chess books were gifts penned by Reinfeld. When I was about to go into my first tournament I sent away for my first purchase, MCO-10.

It sent me down the rabbit hole all right but I still love it and it claims a place of pride on my shelf today. I'm sentimental I guess.

I still remember opening the package up and pulling my very own serious opening book out (sidelining Reinfeld's opening book).

There were plenty of tactical puzzles, and space to write your answer in on each page. I hadn't even played chess yet. I must've been 7 or 8 years old and I wrote down the answers with a pencil. It took several years before I actually played a legimate game of chess.

First chess book: Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess

Rating: I have no idea. Probably well under 1000. It was around 1971 and I was about 13.

I had thoroughly studied the one lone chess book at the school library. The upcoming Spassky - Fischer match was beginning to get hype. So when I saw Fischer's book on the Book Club list I bought it. The Book Club was a great way for students to buy books at a big discount.

Databases? No databases back then. Heck, no computers either. Everything got played out on a board.

I cannot recall the first chess book that I bought. It could have been any of several that I bought in 1977-1978, including Gligoric's Best Games, Karpov's Collected Games, Wijk aan Zee: Grandmaster Chess Tournament 1975, and two I no longer own, tournament books for San Antonio 1972 and the Soviet Championship 1973 (I wish I still had them).

Before buying any of these books, I had started reading books from the library and Chess Life and Review (also library). In 1975, my chess skill went from being non-existent, even though I could beat my brothers, to strong enough to beat all my friends and then my Dad. Library books starting with The 1000 Best Short Games of Chess by Chernev stimulated skill development. In 1976 or early 1977 I met a guy in school that could beat me and started buying chess books and studying more.

I didn't play a rated event until the mid-1990s, by which time I owned 20+ chess books, Chessmaster 3000, and had played a several unrated tournaments. I did play rated correspondence chess in the late 1970s though, losing most of my games.

Storming the Barricades

Larry Christiansen

3 years ago

in late 70's I had just met a new friend at school.' He was over to the house and saw a chess board and asked if I wanted to play. As he cleaned my clock on the board he leaned over and said "did I mention I'm the president of the chess club?" :) I never have beat him in a straight up game....

I went and got my first chess book soon after, 'chess in a nutshell' by reinfeld.

I played chess as a kid at primary school but then played infrequently  until around 20 when I played for a while online, my first book was the Mammoth Book of Chess around that time. No idea what my rating was (or is now for that matter) but I did notice some improvement in my game.

All those RHM Press books had annotations by the players, and most were edited by David Levy. In the early 1980s, when I was no longer playing chess, I traded half my chess books for a mammoth historical artifact from the early 1960s that seemed important to me at the time. I've hardly used the history text in the past three decades, but since returning to chess twenty years ago, have often regretted no longer having San Antonio 1972 and Leningrad 1973. I've forgotten the other chess books that I gave up in that trade.

Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess is a horrible book - if it can even be called that. The concept was good, the execution was not (those who have seen it would know what I'm talking about). Even if it was perfectly done, a whole book consisting of frames still gets amazingly tedious and covers even more amazingly little material. The first book I bought I think is Mastering the Middlegame. I didn't have a rating then, but I think I was 11, so naturally, I kept on starting and restarting the book. I suppose it was actually at the right level for me, just that there was so much analysis and so many deviations that I could never be bothered to go through it all. Aside from that, the quality of the book is quite high, and maybe it it had a slight effect on me subconsciously...

I bought my first book 14 months ago when I started playing chess. It was an opening repetoire book by Sam Collins - Attacking Repetoire for White. Very good book but I would have needed a tactics book (which I soon bought though). My rating must have been something like below 1200 at that time. I'm not sure if my improvement was the book or general improvment. Hard to tell when you're learning the game.