Hello,
If you search this author on Amazon you will find very critical reviews of his books. If you search more using Google, you will find even more similiar opinions, among other from chess historician Edward Winter.
But are there any exceptions? Did he write something better?
I'm particularly interested if you have any opinion on "Learn to Attack with Rudolf Spielmann"?
thanks for your comments!
jarrasch
He is a tolerable chess player, and has a reasonable breadth of interests, as is evident from his personal web site. However, his books all reveal carelessness, haste, and lack of attention towards getting details right. They are not worth taking a chance on when there are so many better books available.
I have one of its books and it sucks a complete waste of $30 variations are well known and rarely puts any knew lines in and if so they are ify lines, there is an abundance of spelling errors and sometimes moves of variations are repeated, replaced, or just left out in critical lines so you have to guess what he meant.(DON'T BUY HIS BOOKS)
just my two cents - I own his 'Encyclopedia of Chess Wisdom', I cant really comment on the content per se, it does seem all over the place a bit though..but what really annoys me - chess board (used in game analysis and examples) ranks & files have no letter/number reference, you need to figure out yourself where c7 or h4 are.... find it annoying
The man must have a loyal fanbase of some sort though. I mean, seriously, how did he keep publishing book after book if they were so poorly received. First book I got ever was World Champion Openings by Schiller. Interesting read at the time but I didn't learn much from it. More like a general overview of a few basic lines.
I have owned a number of Eric Schiller books, and I think that almost every one of them had lots of typos. But many of his books are quite good, if you can stand all the typos.
Here are some Eric Schiller books that I have enjoyed:
Encyclopedia of Chess Wisdom. The first printing of this book had a billion typos (give or take), but later printings corrected most of the typos.
Gambit Opening Repertoire for White. He omits some critical variations in his analysis, but overall the openings he discusses and his analysis seem pretty good.
Gambit Opening Repertoire for Black. Better than the above book. This book has the best analysis I have seen on the Icelandic Gambit (1 e4 d5 2 ed Nf6 3 c4 e6 4 de Be6).
Play Classical Defenses and Win
Schiller was a major contributor to the first edition of the superb Batsford Chess Openings, by Gary Kasparov(!) and Raymond Keene.
Originally posted by RenarsThat's one thing I wouldn't complain about. I see no reason for the letters and numbers on any board that is not being used to teach notation.
..but what really annoys me - chess board (used in game analysis and examples) ranks & files have no letter/number reference, you need to figure out yourself where c7 or h4
Once you learn it, it's easy.
Ask me the color of any square, I won't even look at the board.
f6?
dark