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Very Hot Topic (More than 25 Replies) What is the worst chess book ever ? (Read 148398 times)
Keano
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Re: What is the worst chess book ever ?
Reply #160 - 03/07/14 at 12:16:43
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Very hard to pick a "worst chess book", but after thinking about it I think the 1995 botched Batsford edition of Ficher's masterpiece "My 60 Memorable Games" must surely be in top contention.

To take a masterpiece and ruin it takes some doing.
  
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Bibs
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Re: What is the worst chess book ever ?
Reply #159 - 03/07/14 at 11:42:51
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ErictheRed wrote on 03/07/14 at 11:24:35:
ArKheiN wrote on 03/07/10 at 12:39:57:
Richard Moody's book "Magic, the guy has been known in our forum in two knights threads as "sloughter" and after being banned from here he continue what he did here in chess.com's forum under the name of "sloughterchess".

Just read that page to introduce his book Magic:

http://www.correspondencechess.com/moody.html


In his very first diagram, captioned "Black to play and Win!," I'm still looking for a defense for the second player.  Just for fun, I decided to see if defending such a position is even possible--it's not.  Not even remotely.  I couldn't find any "grovel a pawn down with a terrible position" continuations, White just has a mating attack as far as I'm concerned.

Funnily, my engines do not immediately agree that Black's best first move is 1...e6, which seems forced to me to eliminate 2.Bxf7+.  

Is this Richard Moody our very own Slaughter?  How cute, and that would explain some of his posts, though in fairness he seems to have improved since writing Magic, as I don't see him advocating giving away 8 full tempi anymore these days.


Yes Moody = sloughter. Awful, awful, hapless stuff. Utter nonsense.
This will do even more damage to a player's development than Mike Basman's anti-classical Grob/St George stuff (know the rules before you break them, kids!)

Funny enough, i came across something relevant today. About bad scientists, from Martin Gardner's book about crank science. I quote: (from a review of a Wolfram book) 
1. He considers himself a genius.
2. He regards his colleagues, without exception, as ignorant blockheads. Everyone is out of step except himself....
3. He believes himself unjustly persecuted and discriminated against....
4. He has strong compulsions to focus his attacks on the greatest scientists and the best-established theories. When Newton was the outstanding name in physics, eccentric works in that science were violently anti-Newton. Today, with Einstein the father-symbol of authority, a crank theory of physics is likely to attack Einstein in the name of Newton....
5. He often has a tendency to write in a complex jargon, in many cases making use of terms and phrases he himself has coined....

http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfram/
  
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ErictheRed
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Re: What is the worst chess book ever ?
Reply #158 - 03/07/14 at 11:24:35
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ArKheiN wrote on 03/07/10 at 12:39:57:
Richard Moody's book "Magic, the guy has been known in our forum in two knights threads as "sloughter" and after being banned from here he continue what he did here in chess.com's forum under the name of "sloughterchess".

Just read that page to introduce his book Magic:

http://www.correspondencechess.com/moody.html


In his very first diagram, captioned "Black to play and Win!," I'm still looking for a defense for the second player.  Just for fun, I decided to see if defending such a position is even possible--it's not.  Not even remotely.  I couldn't find any "grovel a pawn down with a terrible position" continuations, White just has a mating attack as far as I'm concerned.

Funnily, my engines do not immediately agree that Black's best first move is 1...e6, which seems forced to me to eliminate 2.Bxf7+.   

Is this Richard Moody our very own Slaughter?  How cute, and that would explain some of his posts, though in fairness he seems to have improved since writing Magic, as I don't see him advocating giving away 8 full tempi anymore these days.
  
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Re: What is the worst chess book ever ?
Reply #157 - 03/07/14 at 10:03:03
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LGXIII wrote on 03/06/14 at 20:30:51:
The following page records that at Hastings, 1895 three of Pillsbury’s opponents were ‘Schtechter, Schlecter, Jauowshi’.

I thought he played Schlecht, Schlechter and Amschlechtesten, but only managed to beat the latter two.
  
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Larsen_fan
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Re: What is the worst chess book ever ?
Reply #156 - 03/07/14 at 08:14:01
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LGXIII wrote on 03/06/14 at 20:30:51:
Hello All,

Just wanted to thank the OP for this thread as I just had the best laugh of the week. Especially, the link to Winter's review of the worst which is hilarious.

Edit, I hope I will be able to place Zugz Wang in a post mortem... Cheesy

I can't help posting one of the magical paragraph :
As regards blindfold chess we are unaccountably informed on page 140 that Capablanca ‘is believed to have started this tradition’. On page 7 it is called ‘bling-fold’. Typos exist by the basinful. Information, of sorts, is offered on such masters as ‘Labour Domais’, ‘Steintz’, ‘Nninzovich’, ‘Enwe’, ‘Resbevsky’ and ‘Rober Fisher’, as well as ‘the famous chess historian Musray’. On page 9 we learn that Emanuel Lasker (‘Emmanuel’ and ‘Emanual’ are the book’s variant spellings) ‘remained world champion for a very long period (1821-1921) which is still a record’. And so it should be, given that 1821 virtually predates the chess career of Labour Domais. The following page records that at Hastings, 1895 three of Pillsbury’s opponents were ‘Schtechter, Schlecter, Jauowshi’. In some passages it is unclear whether the text was typed or something fell on the keyboard.


http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/worst.html


This i pure gold. I almost fell out of bed laughing. Grin
  
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LGXIII
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Re: What is the worst chess book ever ?
Reply #155 - 03/06/14 at 20:30:51
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Hello All,

Just wanted to thank the OP for this thread as I just had the best laugh of the week. Especially, the link to Winter's review of the worst which is hilarious.

Edit, I hope I will be able to place Zugz Wang in a post mortem... Cheesy

I can't help posting one of the magical paragraph :
As regards blindfold chess we are unaccountably informed on page 140 that Capablanca ‘is believed to have started this tradition’. On page 7 it is called ‘bling-fold’. Typos exist by the basinful. Information, of sorts, is offered on such masters as ‘Labour Domais’, ‘Steintz’, ‘Nninzovich’, ‘Enwe’, ‘Resbevsky’ and ‘Rober Fisher’, as well as ‘the famous chess historian Musray’. On page 9 we learn that Emanuel Lasker (‘Emmanuel’ and ‘Emanual’ are the book’s variant spellings) ‘remained world champion for a very long period (1821-1921) which is still a record’. And so it should be, given that 1821 virtually predates the chess career of Labour Domais. The following page records that at Hastings, 1895 three of Pillsbury’s opponents were ‘Schtechter, Schlecter, Jauowshi’. In some passages it is unclear whether the text was typed or something fell on the keyboard.


http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/worst.html
  
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Re: What is the worst chess book ever ?
Reply #154 - 02/28/14 at 05:15:52
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I'm not a fan of 'Unorthodox Chess Openings' either
  
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Bibs
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Re: What is the worst chess book ever ?
Reply #153 - 01/27/14 at 13:17:44
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Similar theme.
This is also fantastically shit, in an 'only Mondo could it like this' kinda way.
http://www.amazon.com/Samurai-Chess-Mastering-Strategic-Thinking/dp/0802775497
  
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Re: What is the worst chess book ever ?
Reply #152 - 01/27/14 at 12:05:18
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The Tao of Chess. The book has 200 principles, applying each of them to real life. Right on the first page he compares 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Bxc6 and now 4 .. bxc3 vs 4 .. dxc3. Many principles are recycling others, principle 173 is missing between 172 and 174, and the application of some principles is just hilarious Smiley "Never a mate with a knight on f8" is a cute rhyme, but translating this to real life, we are led to believe that this means that we should get a body guard or a dog to protect our families when we are not around. I admit, though, that it's a book that is easily in the "so bad it's good" category, so maybe it doesn't qualify for the prize after all?
  
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Re: What is the worst chess book ever ?
Reply #151 - 11/24/13 at 20:32:08
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ArKheiN wrote on 03/07/10 at 12:39:57:
Richard Moody's book "Magic, the guy has been known in our forum in two knights threads as "sloughter" and after being banned from here he continue what he did here in chess.com's forum under the name of "sloughterchess".

Just read that page to introduce his book Magic:

http://www.correspondencechess.com/moody.html

Probably one of the very "best" worst chess book ever. His often bad ideas may be dangerous for the naive beginner. And the guy thinks he knows the truth of chess and he is about 1700 rated...

Another hilarous text :

"Magic! Black to Move and Win - Richard Moody

280 pages, A4 format.

If you are looking for a book with the patina of professionalism, then this is not the book for you. If you are looking for 260 pages of new ideas, then this is the book for you. With over 300 diagrams, you can read it in a car, on a train, plane or subway, and learn major theoretical novelties while you relax without needing either a board or a computer. In terms of sheer quantity, this book has more major TN's than any book we've seen in the past several years.

Featuring radical new ideas such as 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Qe2 Nc6 4.d4!
"

You can buy the book here http://www.ukgamesshop.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=chnew...


Thank your for advertising my book!
  
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Re: What is the worst chess book ever ?
Reply #150 - 11/24/13 at 20:26:31
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Markovich wrote on 03/16/10 at 14:01:19:
I returned Moody's Evans Gambit book to the bookseller when I saw what it was.  He was good enough to give me my money back.


Ken Smith devoted his entire inside back cover and half the outside back cover of his Winter 1995 Catalog to advertising my book---more advertising space than he devoted to any book written by a World Champion; he also sold the rebuttal to my critics for $3.95

Obviously he liked it.
  
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Re: What is the worst chess book ever ?
Reply #149 - 11/22/13 at 19:24:28
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It's sad because he was a very good player. And they say he is one of the best trainers now.
Maybe he does these DVDs at his leisure time.  Roll Eyes
  
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Re: What is the worst chess book ever ?
Reply #148 - 11/22/13 at 13:56:44
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And he seems to be deliberately incredibly sexist in anything he writes. Deeply insulting. I am baffled that Chessbase allow his stuff through, with no editorial control. There is no place for that kind of writing.
Thought it was just me who had noticed how incredibly hapless and ignorant he is.
  
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Re: What is the worst chess book ever ?
Reply #147 - 11/22/13 at 13:52:40
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trw wrote on 02/22/09 at 04:57:17:
Bonsai wrote on 02/19/09 at 20:14:41:
Quote:
Avoid em all.
Chess is no TV Show.

That's a bit excessive, there are some very good ones (depending on what you are looking for). The endgame series is nice if you want to improve your endgames, the Aagaard NID/Bonsai8 repetoire series is good, the Andy Martin Czech Benoni one is good and at least some of King's Powerplay series is nice. Of course you could question whether you get enough value for money given that the contents are of course less than what you would get with a book or one of the "old-fashioned" Chessbase opening CDs. On the other hand the good ones are a bit like a series of lectures by strong players, which is of course beneficial. I find that in the Shirov and Kazim DVDs that I have seen the presentation was quite dry and unengaging (a problem you never have with Andy Martin, but in exchange on some of his works his analysis is just too light, maybe the target audience is much weaker than me, or it's just trying to get something out quickly).

In fact some of the old opening CDs (without multimedia) were very poor lacking explanations, structure, organzation or any sort of guidance (even the content wise very, very good CD by Marin on the Catalan suffered somewhat by the organsiation of the material).

Coming back to books, I just looked at my bookshelf and discovered "Flank Openings" by Ray Keene and "How to Play the Caro-Kann defense" by Ray Keene and Shaun Taulbut, two books that I think are very bad and did not help me, at all. On the other hand next to that (just ot be fair to Keene), there's "The English Defence ...e6, ...b6, ...Bb7" by Keene, Plaskett and Tisdall, which is a really good book with a lot of useful analysis, interesting ideas, which I keep checking when someone has proposed yet another supposed refutation of the English Defence.



I will say i've had mixed dvd experiences but one that stands out as truly awful beyond repair is SadDVD) Decision making in chess Adrian Mikhalchishin

Not only does he NEVER discuss how to make a decision or anything to the sort. It is basically a collection of his best wins, near wins and worst losses with very VERY VERY poor analysis. I don't mean he didn't run a computer. I mean he must have been drunk and sleep deprived while filming.  a 1200 could have analyzed his games better than him. He makes every kind of blunder in the analysis you can think of from suggesting better moves (that allow mate in4 ie DOUBLE BLUNDER) to hanging pieces with check to just entering theoretically drawn endgames from easy wins. It is an embarassment that this dvd was even produced! Often times he'll just go through a string of analysis and his only comment at the end of it will be "And it is obvious why white is winning" (notice any computer evaluates it as like .10 to white.....) he gives no explanations that are long than about 10 words.

I could not agree more with you.
This DVD should never have been produced.
It’s embarrassing to watch.
It’s almost impossible to keep count of all the wrong evaluations he comes up with and all the blunders he makes.
Avoid it like the plague.
  
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Re: What is the worst chess book ever ?
Reply #146 - 11/22/13 at 13:35:25
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Winning the won game by Danny Kopec and Lubomir Ftacnik is by far the worst chess book I have ever purchased, and I have more than 300.

As the title of the book indicates the book is supposedly about how to convert an advantage into a win.
And on the back cover the following is stated.

“Every chess player who aspires to chess mastery must learn the techniques for winning a won game”

And then the text goes on telling you that this book will teach you exactly how to do that.

The book delivers NONE of the promised though. It doesn’t even try!! 

Because it’s not at all a book about winning technique.
It simply a half decent game collection and nowhere in it is the topic of winning a won game discussed.
  
False advertisement is all you get when you purchase this book.
   

  
« Last Edit: 11/22/13 at 17:02:03 by Dorado »  
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