Worst Chess Books!

None of Pandolfini's books come close to being as bad as Magic, which I mentioned earlier.

my system is overrated too

Lol yeah and he wants bank transfer only for the thing!  And he advocates some silly ...g6 ...Bg7 ...e6 ...Ne7 and ...d5 system and losing 9 moves as white!  Probably a satire. 

Agree that Silman is overrated but I hear he has helped many.  His advocated thinking system seems impractical but the idea is to train it until it becomes subconscious (I think?)

Raymond Keene (with Eric Schiller) wrote Killer Chess Tactics, a collection of world champion tactics.  Haven't read the book in a while but the general concept is cool. 

I liked Kotov's writing style.  While it's silly to only go over each line once he does outline a good thinking system: Look at the center type, recall plans and themes around it, note positional imbalances, form a plan, then calculate candidate moves based off a plan.  An example might be closing the center if the opponent is better developed then attacking on the side where your pawn chain points. 

The Grand Tactics Of Chess

I remember spending like 2 hours analysing a position from think like a grandmaster, trying to find THE winning move, i could'nt. the problem is that there is no winning move, the suggested move ends in an obvious draw (i used an engine to check it). it was so discouraging that i stopped reading the book. i think that's a problem with the old classics.

Since there are so many chess books there are bound to be bad ones, i can only think of the ones with titles like, How to play like a GM in 6 weeks.

de la Maza's book isn't horrible. That is, the actual chess stuff is sensible enough. The self-aggrandizement, the constant advertising of how great it is, makes the book pretty awful. But I don't see it competing with some of the others that have been mentioned for the worst. 

Take a look at the links to some of the candidates mentioned in the first page. To be "worst", it has to be really bad. 

Perhaps a mild case could be made for choosing any pre-engine checked analysis, even with the classics.  We have the advantage of having seen very careful analysis by both GMs and engines of formerly favorite opening lines which were advocated by some of yesterday's great players, which have in turn been discarded as weak.  20-20 hindsight.  But we also don't see much "creativity" from engines either, so we may begin to see their long lines for miniscule advantages overturned by better analysis from any source.

When I look at a chess book, I am interested in seeing the usual ideas restated perhaps from another perspective.  Some writers are better at holding your attention in the narrative portions, others better at providing valuable and appropropriate material for the reader's consideration and study.  My worst books are those in which the author tries too hard to sell you on how good (s)he is, or who writes in a dry, boring manner.  There is more to a good book than the accuracy of the subject matter, and unfortunately all too few chess authors are literary giants.

Kotov's "Think Like a Grandmaster" was one of my favorites. I also think Silman is one of the best instructional chess writers. Capablanca's "Chess Fundamentals" is great as a starter. Gee whiz, lots of fine books being panned in this thread.

I've seen incomprehensibly sloppy work (often mainly the editing) in some Schiller books and some pretty schlocky writing, but IMO he's done some pretty interesting ones too.

The most useless trash I ever bought was one of a "ReViewing Chess" series, by Michael W. Raphael. Fortunately it was a cheap Kindle book and I pretty much suspected it was worthless before I bought it out of curiosity (I regard his "efforts", or at least the one I looked at, as pretty close to theft).

"Win Like Karpov!: Learn To Play Chess Like Anatoly Karpov", by IGM Ron W. Henley was poorly executed -- quite a disappointment since I'm a Henley fan.

I think 12 people every year buy "Think Like a Grandmaster". Now thanks to this thread it will be down to 1.

http://www.amazon.com/Final-Theory-Chess-Michael-Danelishen/dp/0981567703

So sad that this thread came to late for me.

You got no benefit from it at all? 

you cannot just excpect from a book to magically benefit you, Think like a Grandmaster may not be the best book, but if you put an effort in solving the positions in the book it will definitely benefit you. The worst book cannot be a book on strategie or calculation, may be on opening theory. cuz even a book with only puzzles and no text is more beneficial than poorly explained opening book

I guess that I was too weak at that point to understand most of the positions in the book. 

I was just starting to play and I only had 5 books:

- a beginners book by an spanish author (Ricardo Aguilera)

- An opening book by Ludek Pachman

- Chess Master vs Chess Amateur by Euwe

- Winning with the Scandinavian by Shaun Taulbut

- Think like a Grand Master by Kotov

As you can see, I didn´t have nothing really useful for somebody that is just learning the basics.

The exercises in Kotov's book are so good that even if he got the evaluations wrong, it is possible, using the techniques he recommended, to find the right continuations and evaluations. That's pretty high praise when you think about it.

Every book, especially in the pre-computer era, has errors. Some of Kotov's analysis beats even today's engines. His books have been pilloried for decades, but they have also been used and studied by players who became masters, IMs, and even GMs. 

"Play" is great.  His other two books can be dispensed with, clearly.

What the hell is this?

Chess books would be a great hurt/heal thread.