Chess books vs video lessons

I bought The Amateur's Mind by Jeremy Silman and omg is it agonizing to learn with. It has one picture of the board then has 3 pages of moves, I am suppose to set up the board in real life or something? Or so back to the picture every line and imagine the moves in my head?

With a video lesson you could learn the same things in 1/10 of the time. I think chess books are useless in the modern era. Video lessons are better in every way.

lol eventually you learn to, if you try hard enough, to read chess books without a board, just moving the pieces in your head (a periodic diagram here and there helps a lot though). 

This is a really useful skill to develop. 

When I was a beginner, I had a super-basic chess book that had no diagrams, and I was too lazy to set up a board, so I just kept trying to see the games in my head. I believe it helped me a lot.

if I set up every position on a board to look at it will take me 2 years to get through 1 book. I can get the same knowledge with a few hours of video lessons. I think this might be part of the reason the overall chess rating has gone up over the years. No one should buy chess books anymore. It's too slow of a way to learn

You might be right about the video lessons vs. books, but the chess ratings increase is probably mostly due to inflation. 

Or when you get good enough you can read chess books in your head, and you won't need internet access or anything to study chess.

Also, notice your rapid rating has increased again! Nice 

I think it is just personal preference....I tend to learn faster and better with videos too, I guess because my mind is "set up" to learn faster visually....have meet many players that swear by books though. When I started I bought quite a few chess books and never was able to get through them much, just gave them away later...the only exception was "Bobby Fischer teaches Chess" because it is almost all tactical diagrams.

The OP is lazy.

I'll do you a favor.  Go to this page: http://kuldhirblog.blogspot.com/2015/07/chess-endgame-books-pgn-files.html

Find the link that says (or just click on it here if it works):

Jeremy Silman - The Amateurs Mind
Click here to download pgn

and - VOILA - here's every position and every move in Silman's book.

Any freebie pgn reader will handle it: Lucas Chess, Scid for PC, etc.

Still, your complaint against chess books is like saying no one should read major literary works because they can see the abbreviated version on video and it's too hard to learn to read.

Do you realize you'd need a long video series to replace the book and there aren't many high-quality series like that?

I agree there are some diagrams in Silman's workbook - like the first one where he tacks on 38 half-moves and there are seven long move sequences without new diagrams in the first 40 pages alone - where it's hard for most people to keep the positions in their head.  But a lot of the diagrams only go on for a few moves and it will help your chess to be able to picture the position in your head.

I have a problem with books, but videos can be a problem too, with a pace that doesn't match the speed with which I can take stuff in. I think the best choice for me, when available (and affordable), may be books in some sort of electronic form, allowing one to just tap in the right place and immediately see whatever position one wants. Yes, yes, it would be great if I could follow a book without such an aid, but I am nowhere near showing any sign of being able to acquire such an ability.

Thanks, I can open the pgn file with wordpad, then copy and paste each section into this site to see the game. Is that the only way to do it?

Using Chess Study Lite, you can open and replay pgn file in the upper half of a tablet or smart phone, and on the bottom half of the display, read pdfs of books.

I also prefer videos to books and over the years I have learned a lot just from watching videos. The best way to learn from videos is to pause the video on and off as you go through it so you can make an effort to figure out the moves in advance b4 listening to the chess master's comments.

I have read many books  and if you want to see the games in the book that are being discussed in pgn format you can go to chessgames.com, search in "collections" for the title you are interested in. Or, alternately, if you want the pgn for a specific game discussed in a book you can go to a database and look it up.  If you are looking for good videos check out youtube.

Playing Solitaire Chess with videos is a fun way to learn chess. You can play solitaire chess with the youtube videos by pausing the video move by move and trying to figure out the moves as the game goes on and then checking to see what was actually played.  

Both books and videos are helpful in learning chess.

Some books are priceless, and some videos are not, and vice-versa.

There is scarcely any good video channel so books and databases are far better.

The disadvantage of video lessons is the pace of which material is delivered. 

Chess books often can give an entire game, with written annotations, in a few pages, and you can play through the game (even setting a board, not necessarily in your head), and read the words much faster than a video. 

Also, you can fit an entire opening repertoire for white in a book, but the videos would be very tricky to make that work.

It seems to me that there are two sorts of opening material. The sort that seeks to give one enough to get started using an opening, and the sort that seeks to serve as a reference to be consulted after playing a game. It seems to me that there is at least the potential that a video could be good for the getting-started purpose. For reference, a book seems more likely to be useful. Some books seek to combine both purposes - with varying degrees of success.

I learned my opening repertoire (a bad one, but a fully complete one) with 2 books. There's absolutely no way I would be able to learn those openings by watching some videos. 

I watch a video or two on an opening when I want a brief introduction to it, and some general ideas. I much prefer seeing the variations and annotations on specific lines (and sample games) in text. Much easier to use as reference.