Chess books or chess e-books? Which are better?

The comparisons between tree-born books and silicon-stored texts are plentiful and well-defined. Some people cannot accept one format and revolve around the tactile experience. It isn't one that has any impact on me, and I am a very longstanding reading fanatic. Once immersed in my reading the world around me fades into oblivion and I enter a world of my own, quite literally. This is not meant to convert anyone who feels differently, it is merely my personal take. Chess books and literature are different though.

You can draw up parallels so long as the books are much the same as standard literature, such as the biography of a great player, or the anecdotes by the irrepressible raconteur Sosonko, but move the topic to very chess-specific content and new considerations must be taken into account. 

One of the challenges of being as passionate as I am about the topics of both books (or e-books) and chess is that I could talk and share far more than the ultra abbreviated video above. Truth be told, I did. The 18-minute video actually spanned more than 30 minutes originally, but it isn't that I concluded the content I left out was bloviated or boring, it is just that at some point some must be considered to detract from the focus of the subject. Nevertheless, I will share two here.

The first was that the first truly interactive chess book, along the modern lines we enjoy today, meaning board and engine to supplement and facilitate the consumption of the chess content, was from ChessBase. At least as a commercial enterprise. The work in question was Mark Dvoretsky's magnum opus, Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual.

First published in 2003, over 20 years ago, the world-famous trainer collaborated with ChessBase to produce a digital version of the work. This was more than just some text files interspersed among the game snippets and positions. He used specific features of the software such as medals and more to make it the ultimate way to study it. 

In spite of its reputation for challenging exercises, it was clearly a labor of love and the examples and material chosen are not only instructive, but also aesthetically pleasing. Consider the solution above: 1. Kh1!! Just beautiful.

Nowadays, you can find it converted to a wide variety of e-book publishers, but ChessBase was first, and frankly remains peerless in my humble opinion, even if confined to the desktop. I study it in this format for my personal use and preference.

The second anecdote, left on the cutting floor of my video editing software (Filmora FTW), was regarding the defunct German chess books, "Weltgeschichte des Schachs". I mention it as a completely singular concept, of which I have a copy to this day, in which hundreds of games of a player were printed without any comments, but with a unique idea: every five moves, in every single game, a diagram is printed to show the current board situation.

A glimpse inside my copy of Botvinnik, though they are all the same.

The idea is that you could not only view diagram to diagram to visually see the game's progress, but could even replay the entire game in your mind, with the help of the diagrams, needing only to keep track of five moves at a time. This is in the video above, but I edited out one interesting trivia tidbit. In the 60 Minutes coverage of Bobby Fischer in April 1972, shortly before his match against Boris Spassky, they show him at his home studying Spassky's games in preparation. The book he had open in front of him? You guessed it, Weltgeschichte des Schachs. 

The report by 60 Minutes on Bobby Fischer highlighted his complete focus on this book to study Spassky's games.

One thing is clear in all this nevertheless: video and streaming may indeed be booming, but the classic chess literature that has brought us to this point is alive and well and has been adapted to the technology of today. There is no arguing the value and enjoyment of video content, but in the end, chess is a mental activity and the introspective analysis that books encourage are a perfect fit.

Click here to buy Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual in ChessBase format

Click here to peruse ChessBase Books