Can you figure chess out or must you read boring books?

Irontiger ... Get over yourself. You are obviously too full of yourself.

Personal attack obtained, yeah !

Now onto another thread.

Chess attracts people who are 'cunning'. When you realise this, you see there's a lot of deception in the game. It's not poker, but still everyone is an opponent and an opponent shouldn't know what you're thinking.

When I first came to chess I was very gullible. I learned the basic rules of chess at an early age and played competitive games, and lost, without knowing any strategy at all or openings. That's how people set you up to lose to make themselves feel better. When I got older I realised you've got to read books about chess. NOBODY good learned by reinventing the wheel. And yes, that does mean I am directly calling Bobby Fischer, who claims never to have had a teacher or needed a chess manual, a liar. A massive liar.

Realise this game is about egos. People don't want to be good at chess they want to beat others to feel intelligent. So they read books on how to win, but attribute their wins to native IQ. Typical human social behaviour when you think about it.

Source of Fischer claiming this ?

Nakamura has made such a claim once if I remember correctly, but he wasn"t completely serious.

Stephen King puts me to sleep (and gives me vivid dreams). Academic and instructional books excite me. Learning stimulates; entertainment dulls the senses.

Good books are always interactive. Read Roland Barthes S/Z for an explanation if this statement confuses you.



(Mebbe I'm a wee bit odd) 

The two should not be considered mutually exclusive.  The best lessons are at the same time educational and entertaining.

Precisely, that's the point of edutainment.

What an awful portmanteau word.

omg a chess player that's not a nerd

Indeed.

I might have said, "mere entertainment." In any case, the key adjective in the OP's title that poisons the well reveals his intellectual poverty, and it fails miserably as a characterization of chess books--even chess books by John Nunn. 

Nakamura was asked what his favourite book was.  He said he read Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games and a book by Tarrasch, but he didn't remember the details.  He has contributed to a number of different books and magazines - Bullet Chess, Secrets of Opening Surprises, New in Chess, New in Chess Yearbook, Chess Informant, so one might guess he has read those as well.

Well, I remember wrongly then.

Fischer of course had a huge library of books and magazines in many different languages, and he quotes from these in My 60 Memorable Games.  Kasparov and Kramnik also read very widely, and recommend studying the classics.

The essence of maturity is the discovery that one need not invent the wheel and the club. In other words, building on those who have gone before (and the work of one's peers) is vastly more efficient that making every mistake anew.


This "discovery" is also the central rationale for the study of history. Even cheap two-bit philosophers have been able to explain the consequences of not knowing about the mistakes of others (I'm certain that you know the cliche). 

No, by training tactics on Chesstempo.

Nah.  The best lessons are usually painful and surprising.

I suppose now we have to debate the definition of "best" in this context.

If we're only considering sheer efficacy, you're probably right.

You're amply displaying the "essence of maturity" through your multiple posts.

You are pompous, condescending, and way too opinionated.

Amply?  I'd say Ziryab is pretty voltly.

Currently that is true.