Read over a 1000 chess books?!

Not wanting to open a can a of worms but if a certain very high rated player states they've been playing for 30 years and have well over a 1000 chess books (lets say they have 1300 books for arguments sake) that would mean they have bought roughly 1 a week - must take some effort to read them that consistently and fit the family in!

Originally posted by plopzilla
Not wanting to open a can a of worms but if a certain very high rated player states they've been playing for 30 years and have well over a 1000 chess books (lets say they have 1300 books for arguments sake) that would mean they have bought roughly 1 a week - must take some effort to read them that consistently and fit the family in!

Not necessarily.

Love of chess correlates strongly with a desire for all things chess; love of chess also correlates strongly with a higher than average rating.
Thus, a higher than average rating coupled with a love of chess correlates strongly with having many chess books and not necessarily with reading many chess books.
Also, it is easier to amass 1000 chess books than it is to have read them so it is more likely that this person is mostly a collector rather than a reader.


Side note: Most rarely read a chess book from cover to cover and usually only with a certain set of books is this done so this could also influence the numbers.

Originally posted by tomtom232
Not necessarily.

Love of chess correlates strongly with a desire for all things chess; love of chess also correlates strongly with a higher than average rating.
Thus, a higher than average rating coupled with a love of chess correlates strongly with having many chess books and not necessarily with reading many chess books.
Also, it is e ...[text shortened]... usually only with a certain set of books is this done so this could also influence the numbers.

I don't want to admit to how many chess books I have. Its certainly not 1000 - but not as far off as it should be (shhh!). I have not come close to reading them all cover to cover! I have however, parused each and every one. No doubt there is great content lying under the covers of each... but quite often my favorite books are game collections. These books are very difficult to go through quickly. They take time.

Q

having a lot of chess books means you're highly inclined to procrastinate.

‘I’ve written more books than I have read on chess’.

GM David Norwood, New in Chess 1996.

I read "Kasparov vs. Deep Blue" and studied those games.
Thats one chess book, perhaps thats why my rating is so low, not enough study.