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-zoe- 10-Feb-08, 05:29	Chess Openings Books I recently got book NUNN'S CHESS OPENINGS. Chess coach in my city recommended this book. What openings books you use?
beachview 10-Feb-08, 07:13	Books on Openings I have Batsford's Modern Chess Openings, 14th ed., ed. Nick de Firmian, but I suppose it's now too old--published in 2000. I don't use it much. I use the GameKnot online database a lot. Would others on this list also recommend buying the Nunn book? I'm amazed at the big outpouring of books on single openings. I did buy one of them--damaged, from the Chess Life website: Michael Melts, Scandinavian Defense: The Dynamic 3 . . . Qd6. In a way the book is about one move: he argues for playing 3 . . . Qd6 rather than Qa5 or Qd8 in the Scandinavian (Center Counter Game), but I haven't done particularly well with it. 3 . . . Qd6 does ward off 5. Bf4, which Fischer played in a famous game. I'm disappointed that Chess Life has few articles on the openings. The old Chess Review was better in this respect. I grew up on Reuben Fine's Practical Chess Openings. I don't have it any longer, but I bet it really seems old-fashioned now.
e4e6 10-Feb-08, 20:02	I am not a firm believer of Encyclopedias. MCO and NCO are too condensed. ECO is ok, but you have to keep them up to date. I personally would recommend books on individual openings, and for someone just starting out, they should explore the various defenses for Black, pick one against 1.d4, 1.e4, 1.c4, and 1.Nf3, and study them left and right. For White, start off with a reportoire book, and once you have Black nailed, go deeper in your White game to learn lines that are typically better than those in reportoire books. The "Starting Out" series (Everyman) is an excellent series to learn an opening for the first time. When you nail that, the "Chess Explained" series (Gambit) is excellent also, though a little more advanced. I would recommend for White either "Starting Out: 1 e4" or "Starting Out: 1 d4", depending on your style of play, the former being for the more tactical player, the latter more for the positional player. As Black, again, I'd go with the Starting Out series, though you must watch out. There are 2 books in that series that I serious do no recommend. One is "Starting Out: The French". If you look at most the reviews, they will all tell you that it's the one book in the series that is poorly written. It's a very complicated opening, and the book doesn't explain it well. If you need books on the French, I'd look elsewhere. The other one I wouldn't recommend is "Starting Out: The Sicilian". It was the first book written in the series back in 2002. It's a bit out of date, and also a little too shallow in theory. There have been many books written since then on specific lines of the Sicilian that are far better, i.e. "Starting Out: The Sicilian Dragon", "Starting Out: The Sicilian Najdorf", etc. They also have ones on the Scheveningen (my favorite), the Sveshnikov, the Classical, and the Closed Sicilian.
rogubravo 12-Feb-08, 16:27	I'm also a big fan of the Starting Out series, and I even use them for choosing the lines I play with white. The one book in the Starting Out series that I would not recommend is "Starting Out: The queen's gambit" by John Shaw. I wouldn't say it's a bad book, it's just noticeably not as good as the others and does not do such a good job at explaining the basic ideas. Many of the books in the Starting Out series are just great, but are probably not really useful for players below 1600. Still, my sense is that before "Starting Out" there were simply no books on specific openings that were meant for players below 2000, so I'm eternally thankful to the series' contribution in this respect! Online databases are also a useful resource for reference (although not for learning how to play an opening). The ones I use are Chessgames.com (pay), and Shredder (free).
neilskye 12-Feb-08, 17:08	Starting Out I only have one book in the series, the Sicilian, by John Emms. I would definitely agree with e4e6 that it is a bit shallow on the theory, although, to be fair, the introduction does concede this; what I do like about it is that, although it does not go into great depth, it gives the general ideas of all the main Sicilian variations. I have had a few wee glances at some other books in the series and will be very interested in buying some more, particularly the Ruy Lopez, the Reti and the King's Indian. My other opening book is the Scotch Game by Gary Lane, I haven't really read it much yet so I can't really comment on it, but I am intending to add the Scotch to my repetoire as I feel my game has reached the stage now where I can think of broadening out my opening repetoire. I don't really rate Nunn's Chess Openings to be honest, I don't have it, but I have had a look at it and I don't think it is very user friendly.
e4e6 13-Feb-08, 04:32	Get Starting out: The Scotch. The book on the Scotch by Lane isn't very good (and overall, Gary Lane is not a good author, perhaps better than Schiller, but not much). In general, the following authors are who you ought to go with vs keep away from: Recommended Authors: Neil McDonald Glenn Flear James Rizzitano Jacob Aagaard (Except for his book on the Panov-Botvinnik Attack) Chris Ward John Emms Andrew Soltis (Middlegame and Endgame books) There are others, but I can't name all of them right now. Ones to play Keep-away from: Eric Schiller Gary Lane Andrew Soltis (Opening books, especially reportoires) Andrew Martin Gufeld and Stetsko Lev Alburt The following are authors I'd only recommend for players over 2000: John Nunn (All his books are extremely deep in theory) Nigel Davies (He writes his books to deceive the player into thinking that the side he wrote the book for is just winning all the time, like his book on the Alekhine, Black scores about 80%, and so you have to be able to decipher what truly is good, and what's bad where he just leaves out completely the correct moves for the opposite side, like White in his book on the Alekhine, or Black in his book on the Veresov).
pgroenborg 13-Feb-08, 13:52	I've got the NCO... ... and I have used it a lot, I think it is great that you can find lines about nearly everything. But the NCO can't stand alone on your shelve, because it doesn't "teach" you, it just shows a lot of variations in a lot of openings. Then it leaves you with an evaluation, that is totally irrelevant if you don't understand the position that you have gotten yourself into. Recently, I must admit, I haven't used it very much, but have preferred books about particular openings. But still I'm happy with it because... you can find something just about every serious line.

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