Any trick for reading Chess Books

Hello,

I have juts bought my first serius chess book, and I see that is extremely time-consuming, not a lot of diagrams, and full of coordinates, just to read 10 pages, with a chess board in front of you takes a lot of time, but the book have 160 pages! so I do not know how much time it can take me! and I do not have much time, it is a bit discouraging, If I did that, I would not have the time to play in moths. I imagine it is a question of getting use to it, but it not easy.

I have done for instance the study plan here in Chess.com and it is quite enjoyable, the same as a lot of videos I have seen, and I know books are indispensable but bufff, It is hard to deal with all of this coordinates. I really like the interactive way of learning

I wonder why there is not an easier system, electronics books that show you the games or even where you could consult the alternatives given when you touch

Or if any trick to read easier the chess books

Thanks

There are some books coming out in electronic versions now, like "My System" where the games play out on an electronic board for you. You didn't say what book you bought, so we can't say if it is available.

You could get an electronic version like "My System".

Set up a board and try to find the best move for each side on every move except for the opening.

I confess to usually using 2 boards; a larger board with the main line and then a smaller magnetic board for variations.  I too prefer digital presentations though.

I love my chess books - I've just been getting into them in the last year. I don't have many, but I actually DO read them in detail and play through the games and subvariations over and over.

Here's the thing - they're ALL from Everyman chess, which sells the .pgn (or .cbv chessbase) database formats on their website.

There is NO freaking way I'd otherwise read these books. I have 2 paper bound openings books of similar complexity as the Everyman chess books, and while they're perfectly good books, the effort required to enter the moves is tremendous, and prone to error. Plus you're constantly going back and forth between the book and the computer even after you've entered the data, which sucks.

With the Everyman books, just fireup your database, and all the moves, variations, and annotations are right there. It's a complete game changer.

To all those folks who say 'play it out on the board' - I say 'screw that.' Sure, chess professionals or people with tons of time to study chess did that in the past, but if you're a busy adult now with family, job, etc., you don't have time to waste doing that stuff. Just trying going through ONE variation and returning the board to the line - then realizing 8 moves later you probably misplaced one of the pawns. Freeking maddening, and a total waste of time for someone who doesn't have the time to devote hours a day to chess.

I really tried for several years to read chess books with a board, and even entering the moves into a computer, and it was so discouraging (entry errors!) and time-wasting that I quickly concluded my time was much better spent studying tactical problems and playing games. Now that I've got Everyman chess resources, I spend a lot of time on annotated games, with great benefit.

Setting things up on a 3d board completely changes how you look at the board.

Get a book with a lot of diagrams every small few moves.  

If you still can't follow the games then there is probably little point in doing the book anyway. What is the point in all these extensive games and databases if you can't remember the past three moves anyway?!   

I've borrowed quite a few chess books from the library, including Seirawan's "winning chess" series.

All of them are impossible for me to read without a board, even with diagrams on every page. I have no idea how class players can manage it, and I'm not bad at calculating in my head. 

It's just that even in Seirawan's book, it's very typical to have a diagram, then 7 moves (one for white and white for black, x 7), and THEN go off into a 5-7 move variation. I seriously doubt the vast majority of class players can successfully visualize this deeply without a board, and even if they can, they're almost certainly not understanding the final position as deeply as compared as if the pieces were already set up.

I can do 5-move combos off the diagram no problem. Unfortunately, that's extremely rare to have any book that is that simple, aside from tactics problems books. 

Heck, most opening books I have insert entire GAMES into the annotations as a variation.Try visualizing that. Even masters would have a hard time absorbing that without a board.

I said make sure the book has a lot of diagrams. Then generally they're not supposed to be off analyzing the final variation, the final variation is supposed to have some point or idea to it as is. They're supposed to be analyzing the given diagram and one of the variations goes off that far (in their heads). One of the variations which they may or may not consider is the 5-7-move variation. You are going to have a bunch of "end" points where you stop calculating in your head and make an assessment in your head, that is what makes sense here. Requiring deep analysis of a position like that to understand it means you're not fully connected with what the author is getting at (unless the author makes some comment like infinity, which can be a valid place to stop calculations).  

If you never saw an opening before and want to do deep study, then put it into your computer. It's completely efficient and you don't just have this big mass of variations you don't have a clue about. 

http://www.eplusbooks.com/books/80-my-system-by-aron-nimzowitsch

The app is only available for IOS but it looks pretty good.

I've never seen a single chess book, even the simple ones (aside from tactics puzzles) of annotated games, that has what I'd consider enough diagrams to easily follow it in your head, as a D-B class player. (I'm probably C pushing B class.)

As much as i enjoy holding a book, when it comes to chess books i go e-book all the way.  Fire up the laptop and learn.  No repeatedly setting up a board and pieces.  Call me lazy...

I feel completely identified with this comment, that could be a great solution

My book was Attacking whith E4 by John Emms, but I bought it in Amazon/Kindle and they did not give the format to view it on this Chessviewer, but from now on, I think that will defintely be my choice, to buy then in their website and get this format. Even if this book it is not so difficult it takes a lot of time, sometimes you make a entry mistakes, and you do not where, and after this effort and so many variations I do not remember a lot of things and I see that Kids  wake up and I have spent all my spare time almost for nothing and not having fun. 

Great answer, I thought there was no solutions, thanks a million, from now on, if I buy a book it will be one of these. The on of IOs seems quite good, what a pitty I do not have Mac

LOL - I bought that EXACT book (Attacking with e4 by Emms) 12 years ago in the paper version.

What a WASTE in the paper version! Seriously, variations and lines so dense they boggle the mind, with like one diagram per page. 

I don't have the pgn version now, but for sure though, I'd almost certainly find that exact same book extremely useful in the pgn version, and the books I bought aren't any less complicated!

That books is one of the best examples in my mind of how playing over a board or entering the lines in a computer is a waste of your life.

Time it takes me to enter a typical annotated game by hand into Chessbase/Fritz: 1-1.5 hrs (I type in a lot of shorthand annotations from the text).

Time it takes for me to actually study such a game, in depth, using Stockfish to play out variations I'm interested in: 30min-1hr.

Do this for like 40 games in a typical book and you've just saved 40 hours of your life in data entry. And that data entry is monotonous, difficult (errors!) and you don't learn ANYTHING from entering it. 

From my point of view nowadays all the chess books should be like that, there is no comparison, it much more visual and easier

The .pgn or chessbase .cbv files are even better - you can read them on your computer (Fritz/SCID), phone, tablet, etc., and enter your own annotations on top, etc.  

Although yes, these android programs are a huge step forward from the paper versions. I just wish I could run them on my large PC screen - doing it on a tablet is crazy annoying when you want to quickly add annotations, run through variations, etc. (Super easy and fast on Fritz on a CPU.)

Not everyone has or can afford a device like Kindle Fire, but I have one, and it's what I use to read chess books. I set up a free chess program on the Fire and set it to analysis mode. Then I just enter the moves from the book as I encounter them. If there is a variation (or a sub-variation), I follow it by making the moves, trying to figure out what's going on, etc. Then, when it's time to go back to the original line, I just hit the "back" button as many times as I need to go back to the main line. It's heaven compared to trying to do it on a 3-D board.