Product Description

This series shows you how to start your chess games as dynamically and accurately as the greatest grandmasters in the world.

Three-time US Champion Champion Lev Alburt, famous for his ability to turn aspiring players into masters, teams up with two-time U.S. Champion Roman Dzindzichashvili and young international star Eugene Perelshteyn to give you a complete repertoire of opening play-as well as a review of all openings and an explanation of the principles of playing this crucial stage of the game. And although these books concentrate on the first 20 moves or so of a chess game, they never leave you hanging without a plan. The authors make sure you know the themes and ideas so that you can follow up your great opening play with winning strategies.

Chess Openings for White, Explained covers the game from the white side. You'll learn how to play and follow up the first move Bobby Fischer called "best by test." Fully illustrated with two-color chess diagrams throughout.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #266079 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Customer Reviews

Good, but lopsided
As a closed game opener I wanted to try 1.e4, primarily to blood myself for playing the open games as Black. This repertoire was very good for this purpose - focus on open games.

Two complaints. The binding is badly glued and came apart after not much use (mentioned by another reviewer too). Second, there is a strangely lopsided approach with respect to the French, which gets some 140 pages of theoretical mainline treatment. This seems very odd, and incongruous given the other labor saving suggestions. Maybe you might want to take a simpler path with the French from another source.

But all up it makes starting out with 1.e4 tractable, which is quite an accomplishment.

Great Openings for Tactical Play
I bought the book because my current opening repertoire was somewhat slow and boring. I wanted something with a little bite and fire.Well, I got it in this book. The openings are fun to play, often creating very dynamic positions where your "combinative vision" gets exercised.

Things I like:
- The resulting positions are generally open and fun to play - if you like sharp tactical positions
- They have TONS of position diagrams - this is very helpful when they go off on side line positions. Instead of rattling off 10 moves and leave it for you to poke them out on a chessboard they give you the diagrams as you go.
- Their comments are easy to understand.
- I liked the heavy treatment of the French. It's actually alot of fun to play against as white for me using their suggestions. I used to dread it because I used to play the King's Indian attack against it. Snoozer if you aren't bobby fischer!
- I've enjoyed playing their recommendations for the Sicilian Grand Prix.

Things I don't like:
- Some of the prose is silly. It sounds like something you'd hear out of a used car salesman. You'll know what I mean when you see it.

One final word: This book is for the COMMON, AVERAGE chess player. If you are a IM or GM then you should look somewhere else. And if you are a IM or GM and review this book..keep in mind maybe it doesn't provide all YOU need to compete at your level..and maybe some of the lines AT YOUR LEVEL aren't sufficient....but at my level it is FANTASTIC and exactly what I need.

Good Easy Read
This book is great because you can read it without a board. This makes the material easy to absorb and you can fly through the book compared to some others where you have to go back and reconstruct a position after going through a long tedious variation. The openings choice was very reasonable and the book will give you a complete response to the black replies without any major holes. The openings are easy to learn but you can feel free to substitute in your own lines for the ones that you are not comfortable with or if you would like to press for more in the opening. I would estimate that this book is suitable for under 2000. Above that you should work harder to get more out of the opening. My only gripe is that the cover fell off the first day but I can overlook this with the great content.