Hi all:
So i just started to read chess books and I noticed that it takes me about 30 minutes just to read 2-3 pages. It takes way too long to read a chess book. Also, will you be able to improve when reading chess books?
Basically, I wanted to know if reading chess books is worth the time or is it better to mostly play and have somebody stronger analyze your games instead.
Reading is nothing.
Even if you are working thoroughly with books it's only a small part of your knowledge. Because playing chess is rather procedural skill like riding a bike than accumulating declarative knowledge (theory).
Well then, every once in a while I absorb the one or another good idea from a book. ;)
But be careful: books are over-rated generally speaking. MFTL readers know what I mean...
PS: what you can do is making your own thoughts about the chess content in books.
Reading is a pleasure.
Reading chess books is a pleasure.
You won't improve much with books, otherwise i'd be world champ. You won't improve with books as you can improve with a coach, but books are cheaper. And you won't improve much with coaches. The only way to improve is to build your own chess training program, and in that program, there will be place for games, coaches and books.
For me I think reading 3-4 books helped, but only a little in rating (200 elo). Well I remember reading Amateur's Mind and my classical went from 1300 to 1800 after 450 games (1 year). I remember thinking the book helped a lot, but I'm not sure how much.
I'm pretty sure the biggest improvement for me was playing games. I realized I was studying too much, and doing nothing but watch twitch streams. But hardly playing at all (a session 1-2 times per month).
I have two acquaintances on lichess and noticed their rating started passing mine, and they don't read books at all. They played every day for hours while I just played 1-2 games here and there.
When I do read books though I can feel myself getting stronger with just 2-3 pages. But it's like you must read 100 pages to make a tiny dent in improvement. I quit reassess your chess 4th edition halfway through from exhaustion/burnout.
This summer I spent a lot of time watching blitz/bullet twitch and noticed a nice little improvement in my chess yesterday, which I've never felt/seen before.
I have a different experience with books: they've improved both my chess skill and my rating considerably in a few months. Before then I was pushing either e4 and d4 and having no idea what to do other than developing the pieces and shuffling them around.
Let me give endgames as an example of where books and other reading materials are more valuable than experience. Take pawn endgames as an example. It would take a very long time for someone relying only on experience and watching one minute bullet games to find out what the opposition is even, let alone distant opposition, diagonal opposition, etc. It's going to be even harder to learn the Lucena and Philidor position and all of their intricacies for example. Or you can read about these endgames and learn their basics in about an hour or two.
You don't 'read' a chess book, you study a chess book. You can't go through a chess book like you would with a novel.
If it takes you 30 minutes to get through a few pages, so what? Is there a built-in timer in the book with a mechanism that automatically closes the cover after a certain amount of time expires? lol Its not a race.
As long as you are understanding the material and absorbing the information, it doesn't matter. If you are reading a dry, boring technical manual, the problem might be with the book/author and not you.
I recall throwing 'My System' by Nimzowitch against the wall after a period of time...
I have never read books. I have always advocated natural talent for chess, the "real" chess, without all the memorizing and chit.
But now, having played a lot vs 2200 elo players I have realized that they are not better than me, they just know their chit better than me. So if I want to win them on a regular basis, I MUST study my openings, I can no longer rely on just learning through playing, because it can take a year of playing to learn opening lines you could learn from just 1 week of memorizing from a book.
So I can be a better player then the one who memorizes lines, but to have a rating to show it, I must memorize lines also to take away his/her memorized advantage and to bring it back to real chess.
As long as mainstream chess is not played in Fischer Random, I say that you have to memorize chit to get 2200+ elo. You can get away with just winging it up to 2000+ elo, but the higher you get, the more players have memorized their openings so you have to memorize too to take away their advantage.
I totally disagree with #2, books are definetly very useful. That is, if you know how to use them....
Sure, not all books are good, but when you know what area of your play you want to improve on, you can find some good books about that area and learn. Then you definetly have to use the ideas from the books in your own games, so playing (normal/otb) games is also very important.
@IM BeepBeepImAJeep
I don't think #2 is saying that books are not useful, just that they are over-rated.
He said "reading is nothing" which has some truth to it if all you're doing is reading a chess book as if it were a novel instead of studying it's ideas and committing yourself to learning what you're studying.
If you pick up a chess book and casually read it like a newspaper, I don't see much value being extracted.
Im pretty sure i guy with 2900+ rating have some good advice. Lets not stick to language interpretations. I improved from 1100 to 1800 elo by reading books and playing otb games in there years. Internet wasnt so good back then. But then rating stopped. Guess find a book in a suited are would be an opening middlegame book about the grunfeld (any tips?). And some general.on middlegames? Or u can do as carlsen memorize 10000 games.
