Think again

On this blog's predecessor, we used to maintain a regular feature called Bad Book Covers, trying to identify the best of the worst in our particular field.

I've not really been keeping up since, but looking back, the last item in the series was from Thinkers Publishing, and its Thinkers Publishing whose eyewatering efforts have been drawn to my attention again recently.

Take for instance Improve Your Practical Play in the Middlegame, by Alexey Dreev, published last year. What is that disembodied hand? Why is it trying to put the pawn's eye out? Is that king some kind of ghost? Who drew this? Who thought it was a good idea?

Talking of disembodied, this is Edouard's My Magic Years With Topalov, due later this month, but what are those heads doing on the cover? Who did this to them? Will they ever be at rest?

About Schmidt

Over the last few days, I've found quite a lot of adverts popping up for this book on my smartphone.

Matter of fact, it popped up three times during the course of one single article.

Naturally I was curious to look up the book, since £6.99 is pretty cheap for a chess book these days. Or any day in the last, what, couple of decades? (By contrast, this one, due out later this year, will set you back £19.99, and that's not bad at all by today's prices.)

So what are we getting for our money?

You may well ask, since the blurb is unsure even what opening we are discussing

which may undermine our confidence that the games have been "carefully selected".