Customer Reviews

Caro Kann Defence: Advance Variation and Gambit System (Batsford Chess Books)

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

 

 

This is a great book. This is not a repertory book but a reference book. I found every variation I was interested to learn. I would say that this book is for people +1900 and for seasoned Caro Kann players. This is not a good book for starting to play the Caro.

There is something I did not like about this book... it is very hard to follow the variations. You have to be patient to find your way thru pages and lots of variations and sub variations.

If you already play the Caro, you are +1900 and have a lot of time to follow thru hundreds of variations then this is the book for you.

If you want to learn to play the Caro and want to learn the structure and plans look somewhere else.

For decades, A. Karpov has been the world leading expert and supporter (both in theoretical discusion and practical results) of this very solid defence. This book is focused in the sharp advance and gambit lines (ECO B10-B12) and accomplishes the task of pointing out the best continuations and ideas for both sides in a wonderful way. Either you like to defend the resourceful positions arising from this defence or to crack it, this book will help you to choose the best way to do it. The variations follow a prelation order helping the reader to identify them from bad or dubious to recommended ones.

Overall, an excellent book which surpasses the good old work from V. Kotronias on the same subject.

I just recieved this book in the mail and wanted to throw out a quick review of the publishing job and some of the content. I really think this is how an opening book should be made. Very easy to read and follow, multiple indices, an average of about 2 diagrams per page for 260 pages. The prose is conversational and direct. This book looks to be an excellent resourse for both black and white players who want to enter these variations. About 230 of the 260 pages cover the Advance system. I eagerly await the next volume, and I don't even currently use the C-K defense. This looks to be one of the best opening books I've seen. Very clean, professional. Buy it if you are at all interested in the Caro-Kann.

If John Watson and David Bronstein were to write one on the Caro Advance, this would be it, except it's Anatoly Karpov, and Mikhail Podgets, of wich the latter is probably responsible for the lucid, insightful, and highly entertaining prose comments. Jimmy Adams was the translator. Coverage is balanced and exceptionally comprehensive, presented in a tree style. There are detailed tree indexes for every chapter, but it lacks an index for the hundreds of embedded games, just giving listings for the dozen plus illustrative games added on at the end. That's about the only flaw I see. The volume assumes some acquaintance with the main variations, but is probably accesible to anyone who's gone through Starting Out: Caro Kann or something similar. Anyone from A or B class through GM should find it more than useful.

I have only got through about the first quarter of this book. But, it does seem fantastic for the intermediate and above player(I would say at least 1700) if you want to play either side of this opening. I learned why the fantasy variation is not favorable at high levels. Karpov does seem to be very objective throughout(the reason I can suggest it for either side).

Of the part of the book that I have gone through there is one point where he suggests that even though white is up a pawn if he tries to make progress he will either end up drawing or worst. He gives 2 example games of how play might go, in the first one there seems to be an improvement for white(I didn't plug it into rybka-my computer has a pretty bad virus at the moment. So I might be missing something. But, it seems pretty clear to me-I play about 1800 level). A very minor issue which most people wouldn't even notice(If I am correct). The only other issue with this book that I think you might have (which is true of any chess book) is whether you are going to put in the work into the book. But, I have found that karpovs enthusiasm makes it less of a chore to go through even though there are a lot of variations.

I would not say that that one minor issue detracts from the book at all-it was just one game which I REALLY wanted to prove the advantage. The book is advanced as I said. Karpov's writing is energetic and you can feel his love for this opening. Any book written by a player as great as karpov has to hold some great weight and I think he delivered with this one.

I just wanted to add that kotronias's book on beating the caro kann while old has a FANTASTIC introduction to the advance variation(I think it is at least 30 pages long with thematic breaks and piece placement etc.) that might be a good introductory book to those of you who either haven't played the caro kann advance from either side or are not advanced enough for the karpov book.

Karpov's books on openings are great. If you pick this one and some extra material like the Informator's monography on B12, you will learn it well. Some of the games are old. Some variations are analysed by Karpov but were not tested in important tournaments (dangerous to play in correspondence chess if you don't check it throughly).