I prefer tournament books like Zürich 1953 over selected games, as the games in a tournament are representative, while selected games are selected by some criteria and often are not representative of typical game play.
@ThePYGOD I agree completely with your attitude toward books. I love to have them on the shelf, read them, look things up, and so on. However, maybe oddly, I totally disagree with your choice of favorites. My preference is much more along the lines of @lizani and @tpr I have about 400 books, no idea of their value, as they were collected over 30 plus years, used, new, obscure foreign language (french, german, russian {including Levenfish & Smyslov on rook endings} , dutch, italian, even chinese) My favorites are endgame books. Just got a copy of Six Hundred Endings, not knowing it was in descriptive. Also favorites are collections of games by old almost forgotten players, Prezpriorka, Lilienthal, Breyer, Santasiere, and tournament books, Zurich 1953; New York 1924.
Over my many years I have been pleased at how often I see a reference to a particular game, or even a particular tactic I recall, and say to myself "I have a book with that" find the book on the shelf, pull it down, read it again. Last week I did that with the Chatard gambit in the French, and an Evans Gambit game by Breyer.
It's good to learn that some people have obsessions similar to mine.
biography of Breyer by Jimmy Adams, on blindfold games is remarkable because Breyer went for the world record at the time (25 simultaneous) and ran the course, but played poorly, scoring okay with the help of opponents who gave him not truly earned draws. kind of amusing.
also forgot to say: in spite of my aversion to Serbian politics and history [until last week, maybe] I really like the encyclopedias (miniatures, endings) of the Informant factory, Sahovski. Their books are perfectly done, pleasant to handle, soothing almost. Who knew? Not me until a few years ago.
@sparowe14 said [^](/forum/redirect/post/Q9Bsma2r)
> @ThePYGOD I agree completely with your attitude toward books. I love to have them on the shelf, read them, look things up, and so on. However, maybe oddly, I totally disagree with your choice of favorites. My preference is much more along the lines of @lizani and @tpr I have about 400 books, no idea of their value, as they were collected over 30 plus years, used, new, obscure foreign language...
It must be fascinating to have so many books in different languages.
As for our different tastes. It's just normal, Since I've learned to play Chess a little over one year ago as a late starter of 50 years young.
You have 30 years of experience over me. My tastes will likely change as I grow as a Chess player.
Just bought 3 new Chess books today.
PCO: Practical Chess Openings by Martyn Kravtsiv.
Pawns to Players: A Match for The White House by Jack Random.
The Tournament by Matthew Reilly.
83.75 CAD in total
The $1K Milestone was just the beginning.
@ThePYGOD Well said. I started "late" also, in my 30's, and I have gone through several phases, including breaks from involvement for several years. I still play at our local club and a few local tournaments but I enjoy reading and studying more. I can't read all those foreign language books, french and spanish fairly well, but of course can follow the game notation usually.
Most players I know are "post-literate" and young, learning only from videos, podcasts and so on. I am glad to be stuck in the books.
@tpr said in #11:
> ... tournament books ...
Alekhine wrote a book about the 1927 tournament, including some comments about the subsequent match. Here is a little bit of it:
"... such sporadic signs of intellectual weakness can in no way be regarded as rare exceptions ... it is necessary not to believe [Capablanca] in the middle game, that is, to check each of his tactical thoughts with the utmost meticulousness - for it is by no means impossible that a demonstrable 'hole' will be found. This decision ... helped me in no small measure to make the most of Capablanca's omissions in a whole number of match games (1, 11, 21, 34). ... in the history of chess, the New York Tournament 1927 will be in the books as the starting point to that spectacle, which finally destroyed for our art the harmful legend of the human chess machine. ..."