Is there still a place for books in chess study?

Do you have a copy of Modern Chess Openings, and do you use it?  I remember back in the "olden" days that anybody who wanted a fairly complete overview of all the openings had a copy of MCO, but these days I think the  Explorer function on sites like Chessdotcom does a much better job. Also it has become much easier to analyze games using the Analysis Board. Is there still a place for books in chess study?

I still have plenty of chess books, including some published 50 years ago.

Chess books are the core of my ongoing study, but I haven't looked at MCO in the past six months. I also use Chess Base, PowerBook, Opening Encyclopedia, opening monographs, Chess Informant, ...

You've omitted the two types of books that I found most useful.

(1) Books explaining middle-game strategies, such as Pawn Power in Chess and My System.

(2) Annotated collections of grandmaster games, such as Zurich 1953 and My 60 Memorable Games.

For someone who lacks the attention-span to make it to the bottom of the page, they are probably a waste of time.

I dont think books are very relevant anymore.  I do like books of puzzles and tactical problems, you can do a few before you go to sleep at night. I like books over tablets for this.

Why would I recommend a reference book? I listed the two types of books that I found useful, and neither type includes reference books.

Yes, I did.

What did you think it was?

I think books are still relevant for 3 reasons.

1. Books that explain strategy. 

2. Books that explain games.  Stockfish can tell you why a move is good or a move is bad, but it can't explain the theory behind the move like a human can.  

3. Puzzle books.  While I think chesstempo is the greatest collection of computer puzzles there is, there is a limit to what it can do.   There are certain kinds of puzzles only a human can make  and a value in having a human check all the puzzles.  Don't get me wrong, I think while automated computer puzzles are better than classics like 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate, just that they can't replace every kind of tactic book.  

I learned to play this position from the books pictured. It is possible to learn the position from other sources, of course, but books are a terrific resource. The position is from a game I played on this site. My opponent misplayed it.

1. Agreed.

2. Whataboutism.  Just because explaining your own games is valuable does not necessarily make explanations of master games non-valuable.

3.  Computer generated puzzles, like lichess, chess.com or chesstempo, are great.  They do one thing and do it well, but they still only do one thing. The kind of tactic where there's only one right answer and you have to find it.  There are lots of valuable tactics puzzles they do not replace.   For example, you won't find the kind of puzzle where it is a mate in 3, and there are no forced moves, so you have to calculate out 5 ~ 20 lines in order to solve it.  You won't find retrograde puzzles, or helpmates, or maze style puzzles.  There's a lot you are not going to find in a computer generated puzzle. 

2. Lol, another fallacy, this time false dilemma.   You can analyze your own games AND review master games. Doing one does not prohibit you from doing another. 

Anyways, you can definitely learn from watching masters play and incorporate their ideas into your own game.  That is true from fresh newbies to Magnus Carlsen. Masters are doing things that maybe never even occurred to you, but that doesn't prevent you from taking their ideas as your own.

3. They have mate in 3 puzzles, but not mate in 3 with multiple right answers.  Computer puzzles do one kind of tactic puzzle and do it well, but there is value in other kinds of tactic puzzles. 

Don’t play c6-c7!

Sure, there are bad bad books just like any other product. But their value is in a focused learning experience where you have concept-explanation of concept-simple exemples-harder exemples-tricky exemples-other things to know about application of concept. Hand-tailored exemples are often much better to really show you some pitfalls in thinking than random generated once, which are better for pumping up the numbers.

Opening books are worthless, but annotated grandmaster games, strategy books and endgame manuals are still useful.

He did. Holding the draw was then easy. 

Reading no more than Isaak Lipnitsky’s essay at the front of Vladimir Barsky, The Ragozin Complex gave me the knowledge that resulted in two wins against an opponent who usually gives me great difficulty. Moreover, he still like the position we both sought, so I may get another chance.

I find opening books pretty useful. Even the good opening books will have sections where the analysis isnt as good as it could be but Im okay with that. Part of the fun of reading an opening book for me is to absorb the ideas and come up with improvements of the lines the author gives.

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Im a huge fan of chess books in general. I prefer studying tactics from a book than anywhere online. Carefully studying Karsten Muller's fundamental chess endings has improved my understanding of endgame a lot. It may be true that my games are often decided by simpler mistakes but it gives me pleasure to understand the more complicated things in chess whether or not I get to use them in my game.

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Something that hasnt been emphasized much in this tthread so far is that the value of a book isnt based solely on its educational value. Many chess books are very entertaining. I find that they can help increase my motivation for doing the more tedious study that is necessary to get better. Some of these include The life and games of Mikhail Tal by Mikhail Tal, 200 open games by David Bronstein and the My great predecessor series by Gary Kasparov.

I think books are still very useful. If you can read and study for an hour or more on a screen then online ressources might work for you. But I find it rather hard. So books are still good to activate the long term memory in my opinon.