English Chess Forum

Ian Marks does some sensible book reviews on the Chess Scotland website: http://www.chessscotland.com/news/?p=255

Richard Thursby wrote:

Neil Graham wrote:Tony Miles once reviewed Eric Schiller's book Unorthodox Chess Openings in two words: "Utter crap," which is about as concise a review of a bad chess book as you can get.

That's quite surprising given the opening he used to defeat Anatoly Karpov in the European Team Championship in Skara in 1980!

I don't think his "review" primarily damned the book in question because of its intrinsic subject matter, more how it was presented

BTW one definitely recalls Schiller once virtually conceding that he was in the business of producing potboilers, but pleading that this was his only way of making a living from chess (the clear inference being that actually good chess books wouldn't sell nearly as well) Thoughts?

John Upham wrote:A fresh candidate for the title of "Worst Chess Book Ever" has appeared

It would have to compete with Andres Hortillosa's "Improve Your Chess At Any Age" which is by a country mile the worst chess book I've ever read.

Richard Thursby wrote:

Neil Graham wrote:Tony Miles once reviewed Eric Schiller's book Unorthodox Chess Openings in two words: "Utter crap," which is about as concise a review of a bad chess book as you can get.

That's quite surprising given the opening he used to defeat Anatoly Karpov in the European Team Championship in Skara in 1980!

He clearly commented about the book rather than the openings.

Matt Mackenzie wrote:BTW one definitely recalls Schiller once virtually conceding that he was in the business of producing potboilers, but pleading that this was his only way of making a living from chess (the clear inference being that actually good chess books wouldn't sell nearly as well) Thoughts?

Thoughts? Well, your inference is nonsense as 2 seconds thought would tell you. The point is that writing a really good book is very hard work. The justification for churning out potboilers is that it takes 10 times as much work to produce a really good book as a potboiler so even if on average each potboiler only makes you 20% of what a really good book would you are still quids in.

This simple principle also explains why so few accountants chuck it in to try and become movie stars.

I hope an accountant would not use numbers quite so casually.

Jon Tait wrote:I used to like some of the reviews at ChessCafe. But you can't see those now unless you pay for a subscription and who wants to do that?

Otherwise, Sean Marsh's long reviews for Chess Monthly are probably the only ones I look at nowadays.

Just discovered this chess review blog:
https://chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/

His reviews seem pretty good.

Jon Tait wrote:

Jon Tait wrote:I used to like some of the reviews at ChessCafe. But you can't see those now unless you pay for a subscription and who wants to do that?

Otherwise, Sean Marsh's long reviews for Chess Monthly are probably the only ones I look at nowadays.

Just discovered this chess review blog:
https://chessbookreviews.wordpress.com/

His reviews seem pretty good.

Probably one of the only english language review blog/sites still going Thankfully its always worth a read!

A wordless review

That's a genius review!

Worst review of a chess book on Amazon:
"Beware - it is a bloody chess book !"
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-re ... 1886846073

Good find.

But were you looking for Leininger's Killing Suki Flood. Because, having read the opening page or two, I have news for you - Dostoyevsky, it ain't