Customer Reviews

Basic Chess Openings

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I highly recomend this book. As an intermediate player (1700-1800), I found myself usually getting behind in the beggining against more advanced players. This will teach you just about every opening (along with "More Basic Chess Openings") and ensure your confidence at the start of a game. If you have never picked up a chess book, like myself, this is where you should start.

I have a number of general opening books: NCO, Horowitz's Theory and Pratice, Fine"s Ideas Behind Chess Opening's. Kallai's book is far superior to Fine's. It reads easier and provides more details (variations). It also shows the basic traps for both sides. I am surprised that this series of books are not more popular... I turned in my Fine's book and have no regrets.

My only problem with the book is the title: it is only about e4 openings, mostly from white's perspective. The companion d4 book is probably necessary to learn how to respond when playing black against d4.

5 stars otherwise; I love the presentation. I started learning openings with Reinfeld's very basic primer, but I think it would be easy to start with this book. I especially value the discussion of middlegame plans after each main variation; this is lacking in many other opening books that focus on variations. A nice balance of details and strategy.

The content of this book is very helpful for beginners or intermediate players (like me) who want to learn the basics of king pawn openings. I would give it 4 or 5 starts for content, but as with many Cadogan published books, the pages will begin to fall out after using the book a few times. This defect is also true of my copy of More Basic Chess Openings by the same author. Poor binding is a common complaint with Cadogan books. E.g. read the Amazon customer reviews of The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal. Apparently Cadogan has been succeeded by, or renamed, Everyman Chess. (The British chess publishing industry appears in great turmoil these days.) Everyman uses a different printer. Binding quality of my one Everyman Chess book, Art of Attack, Vukovic is very good.

The two books by Kallai are quite wonderful. They are a nice modern complement to 500 Master Games of Chess by Tartakower. They are worthy to be joined with that great book. Each opening section cotnains a valuable section about subsequent plans and ideas. If people knew how good these books were, they would quickly be snatched up.

I really like this book. It covers many of the 1 e4 openings in great depth. As opposed to simply telling you the opening, Grandmaster Kallai describes what is actually happening during the opening, and what you are aiming for as a result of your moves. For my basic/intermediate level of play, it's exactly what I'm looking for. Buy it with the 'More Basic Chess openings' book which has 1 d4 and other openings.

I enjoyed this book. It is clear concerning viability of different lines. Many opening books are too detailed for my level of play. I don't have an ELO rating, but I'm ~ 1900 on Excite's chess site. Good luck translating that one :)