My Thesaurus tells me that a “bookworm” is either an “enthusiastic reader” or an “insect eating books”. In an age of mass extinction I fear that both of these species should be placed on the endangered list if the result of my chess survey is anything to go by.

I’m teaching two new chess classes this term and at the start of each term I have the pupils fill in a small survey in with I ask for such information as “age”, “age learned chess” and “number of chess books that you have”.

I was very surprised to find that 74% of the students have no chess books at all. Nil, zilch, zippo! How can you learn chess or hope to become a good chess player if you don’t study chess books? Has the internet totally replaced books as a learning tool or are young chess players just not reading these days and instead learn how to play from their friends?

One of my favourite stories is about a junior training squad I was coaching in the 1970s and I asked the students how many chess books they had. Most had half a dozen or so, but Ian Rogers had 100. It’s no wonder that he went on to become a grandmaster.

As for myself, I never had a chess coach but was an avid reader (and collector) of chess books and magazines. I used to order antiquarian books from a second-hand book dealer in America and well remember the thrill of receiving a parcel of carefully wrapped old books in the mail every month or so. The musty smell of the books brought back memories of the hours that I spent searching through second-hand bookshops looking for that rare chess book that I didn’t have already.

In those days of course Australia was an isolated country in chess terms and we didn’t have grandmasters or experienced chess coaches roaming the country to help the keen budding chess champion.

With chess books you could read the advice and play over the games of any number of famous chess players from current champions back to Paul Morphy, the American prodigy from the 1850’s.

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but I can’t help feeling that today’s players are missing out on something if they aren’t reading chess books. Worse still, my 3000 odd chess books, instead of being a valuable asset, will be worthless as no-one will be reading books. READ MORE CHESS BOOKS!