I think it's better for beautiful story of a genius , rather then true. In my opinion hard work and experience is what leads to success, so without books and experiencing the theory in practice it would be impossible to realize.

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Well, you can't prove a negative.  If we went back in time and asked Capa himself to prove that he never read a chess book, there would be no way for him to do that.  I found my copy of Edward Winter's book on Capa.  It shows quite clearly that Capa was not off on his own somewhere magically divining the secrets of chess.  He was involved in first the Cuban and then the NY chess scene.  Cuba had a vibrant chess scene, having hosted the two Steinitz-Chigorin matches and a visit from Pillsbury. In NY, Capa edited a chess magazine, joined the Manhattan CC, analyzed with Lasker, got involved in the debate over the Rice gambit, and annotated the games of the Lasker-Schlechter championship.  Capa's analytical work demonstrates that he was familiar with the theory of his time, although he had his own ideas, of course.  A bit later on in Capa's career, Winter includes Capa's own account of consulting a book to brush up on the latest opening theory. Capa claimed the book was useless to him because it contained too many errors.  



   

The idea of getting world champion without working has its own taste. 

According to Lodwijk Prins' biography (coauthor Max Euwe) of Capablanca from 1949 Capablanca himself has said that he began to study chess after he left school.

Keano wrote on 12/14/16 at 02:01:58:



Are you saying that it's more reasonable for Nakamura (than Capa) to have read little to no chess books because Nakamura could study in other ways (like computer)?

ReneDescartes wrote on 12/13/16 at 01:48:50:


This cuts both ways, I think.  The fact that Capa hung out at these clubs would also have given him access to their libraries (assuming they had one) or to chess materials he could have borrowed from other members.

Nakamura used to make a somewhat similar claim -- that he didn't read chess books and didn't study any of the classic games.  He claimed he just learned from using a computer.  Of course, his step-father is an FM and a chess coach, who could have taught him the classics without Nakamura actually needing a book.  But still, hard to believe that Nakamura wouldn't have studied any chess books (his father surely would have had a chess library at home) or at least have read his father's own book, which, iirc, was pretty good.

Scarblac wrote on 12/13/16 at 13:05:09:


Say rather that he didn't think the basic understanding of the Open Games could be seriously improved post Morphy – but that didn't stop Fischer going through theoretical works and making endless corrections.

Scarblac wrote on 12/13/16 at 08:34:45:


Not at all. why do you say that? He thought it was better than most of the contemporary books at the time.