Does anyone own this book?

@mchill said
Many thanks to everyone here for the feedback. This looks promising, and I'll put it on my list. Still a few months before I'm ready for another book though - 🙂

As far as I know, I am the ONLY writer in this thread who has ever READ any part of that book.
You may take the others' opinions for whatever they are worth.

@duchess64 said
As far as I know, I am the ONLY writer in this thread who has ever READ any part of that book.
You may take the others' opinions for whatever they are worth.

As far as I can recall, the book's intended for intermediate-to-advanced players.
It's not as advanced as some of Dvoretsky's books.

Before anyone decides to spend a lot of money on the book, one should keep in
mind that much of its content may be too advanced for players below USCF Class B.

@mchill If the book was so fantastically good as to be worth $100 then many people would have purchased it and it would be a bestseller - even at that price.
Therefore I can only assume the answer to be , no it is not worth $100

@johnnybike said
@mchill If the book was so fantastically good as to be worth $100 then many people would have purchased it and it would be a bestseller - even at that price.
Therefore I can only assume the answer to be , no it is not worth $100

That's absurd.

First of all, it's hard for an out-of-print book to become a bestseller more than 20 years after its publication.
Second, a book's quality often has little or nothing to do with its popularity or
sales (which is heavily dependent upon its price) at the moment.
Some very bad books have become very popular.

Eric Schiller was one of the most prolific writers of chess books in English.
Does Johnnybike imagine that Eric Schiller must have been one of the best writers of chess books?
(By the way, I met Eric Schiller and had some sympathy for him personally, but
his chess books ranged from mediocre (at best) to dreadful in quality.)

Does Johnnybike imagine that all Nobel Prizes in literature should be awarded only to best-selling authors?

Again, I do NOT recommend the book to many players at RHP because they seem
too weak to comprehend much of it.

@Duchess64 I think you have missed the point of my post. In golf, if a driver came along that was guaranteed to give you an additional 25 yards/metres and went straight it would fly off the shelves no matter how much it cost and who made it.

If a chess book was so good the same would apply. Therefore I am not saying it is not any good because it is not a best seller. Rather I am saying the opposite.

@johnnybike said
@Duchess64 I think you have missed the point of my post. In golf, if a driver came along that was guaranteed to give you an additional 25 yards/metres and went straight it would fly off the shelves no matter how much it cost and who made it.

If a chess book was so good the same would apply. Therefore I am not saying it is not any good because it is not a best seller. Rather I am saying the opposite.

Johnnybike attacks a strawman (at best).

No one has claimed that just reading this book (or any book)
will 'guarantee' (to quote Johnnybike) a dramatic improvement
in chess playing strength.

As far as I can recall, Yermolinsky offered some somewhat
unconventional views compared to most instructional books.
That's interesting to me, but it would likely just confuse most players.

Weak players tend to stay weak players because,
being far too insecure, they like to reject objective
criticisms and refuse to concede their errors.
That's a major reason why I usually avoid sharing
chess analysis with typical club players.