[.ca] Encyclopedia of Chess Wisdom, 2nd Edition (ISBN 1580420885)

Typos? Who Cares?:
Ok, so there are some typos, but that really doesn't matter. The content of the book really helped me become a better chess player. Eric Schiller has the ability to write good, quality chess books even if he can't spell worth beans or use proper grammer. I mean, don't look at the typos and say "This book sucks. It won't help me." Look at the book in general. If you look past the typos, you have a very good book that will help you become a better chess player.

Great essential themes and ideas book!:
I picked up this book and it found it truely lives up to it's title. It gives the essential wisdom of basically all chess topics without going into tons of unnecessary over-analysis. Will introduce the topic, give you the main themes and important facts to know and a few examples to clearly illustrate those facts, and do so in an easy to read and understandable fashion. I read this book on a trip and it was perfect since it illustrated it's points without too many examples.

Eric Schiller produces another terrible book:
This book atracted me at first, since it looked good, and seemed to convey the essential knowledge any player who wants to improve his game needs. It dosent. after buying this books, i realise it was made for complete beginers, and was filled with extremly useless knowledge. The best example was a section about "mates in the opening", where Schiller presented how to mate in the scandinavian: 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 and if Ke2 then Qe4 mate. what does this useless examples, which will never occeur in a game (who plays 2.Ke2?) help me? Schiller is a 2200 player, who has published over 80 books, some of which he writes in days, and ive seen many of his books, all of low quality. I urge you not to buy this or any other Schiller book. No matter what your level is, this book just will not help you.

Encyclopedia of Spelling Errors...:
You can read some of the other reviews to get an idea of some of the specific errors... The book is loaded with them from wrong moves to other typos... How can this book help anyone if half the battle is trying to figure out whats going on... He has quotes from people in years that they already were dead... Games with wrong year and people listed... Sad that they still publish books from this author... I do not understand why they let books out with so many errors... When I buy a chess book I expect it to have almost no errors... This book has more errors than actual things that help players... If you give this to someone and tell them to find all the errors... They woudl probably have grandkids and still not find them all... I dunno what he means by Golden Nuggets... I think more work went into thinking of name of book than content... Books like this give chess books a bad name to say very least... If you want a book on chess strategy try Watson's Advances since Nimzo... Even The Mammoth Book of Chess will help you more than this item... Perhaps even consider Silman's Strategy Grandmaster Techniques from A to Z book. Hopefully one of those books might help you in your game and give you value for your dollar...

Decent.:
This book can be useful in 2 ways. First, it can expose beginners to a whole host of topics that they will eventually have to delve into in order to be decent at chess. These beginners can learn most of the broad rules of thumb that decent players take for granted. Second, once you become a weak intermediate - intermediate player, it might be useful to review the concepts once in a while, just to keep them fresh in your mind. It's funny how after studying a particular opening for a long period of time, you often forget one or two basic broad opening principles... This book is the epitome of a three star book. It's decent, simple (necessary for its target audience) and does what it sets out to do with no frills or great "bonuses". In other words, it's fine. Unlike the atrocity that Schiller's "Standard Chess Openings" is, but that's another story...