Customer Reviews

Chess Openings for White, Explained: Winning with 1. E4 (Alburt's Opening Guide, Book 1)

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

 

 

The Sicilian with an early f4 with white as a way to play against the Sicilian is very good. Not only are the moves given but the ideas behind the moves and the general opening system are told. I personally like playing the Ruy Lopez as white instead of the scotch that they suggest with any early d4. So you can take what you like and leave what you do not like with the suggestions. Books that cover opening ideas and the traps in the openings are the best way to learn your openings and understand them. After this book you can get the one for playing black by Alburt.

If you are just beyond being a beginning and are in search of what openings might be right for you then this book will be helpful. It does a good job of telling you about the limited opening system it covers. I doubt that every opening suggested in the system will fit most people. But with that in mind, you can pick and select parts of things and add from other books (such as a general book that covers openings and ideas like "Understanding the Chess Openings). You will need to look around and should listen to what well known authors have to say about different openings. But that is what makes learning an opening fun. I also suggest to learn the ideas in the openings get a couple of good books on opening chess traps. This will help you understand the ideas and tactics in the openings (there are a lot of choices for chess opening trap books). Understanding the pawn structures in your openings would come next.

In conclusion: I recommend as a first book to learn openings getting a good book that covers understanding of the ideas and gives you a general guide. This book doesn't do that. But, I would suggested it as a second or third book when investigating which opening might be best for you.

First, I wasn't sure whether to give it 3 stars or 4 stars, I was leaning towards the former out of disappointment and 4 out of more blanked objectivity. I will say that I was anticipating this book for months after enjoying the completeness of their first book and it really didn't live up to my expectations. (Note: I enjoyed the first book very much and don't play a single one of their recommended lines!)

I understand the difficulty of the subject they're trying to tackle. I think IM David Vigorito put it best when he said something like: "If you play the Ruy Lopez and the Open Sicilian main lines these alone require as much studying as all of 1. d4 combined." It's hard to disagree with this statement knowing that I avoid the Ruy Lopez (for now) and have spent a great deal of (worthwhile) effort to be well prepared against the sicilian. I think however there was too much temptation by them to avoid any real theoretical lines. Basically in the space and target audience (a very wide one) they were trying to satisfy, it was difficult.

So let's look at their recommendations:

Against 1..c5 they recommend the "improved" grand prix attack with 2. Nc3 followed by f4 and the line with Bb5 so that white is not worse out of the opening. I think this is a very practical suggestion, and if I'm in their shoes I probably pick a similar line. However I think they try to sell the strength of this variation a little too hard and it has little surprise value. I guess I didn't know what to expect from this section, but it would have been nice had they gone for the gold with the open sicilian so they could give their always fun mini-novelties that tend to be quite reliable.

Against 1..e5 they recommend the Scotch Gambit. Now here I think this is an outright cop-out. I absolutely understand them wanting to avoid the mainline Ruy Lopez, but I'm generally not to impressed with this suggestion. I expected an exchange Ruy Lopez, perfect for their type of setups and typical of 1. e4 repetoir books. I'm not sure I would trust their analysis here and would definitely check it very carefully with multiple sources before dare employing this in a serious game. I think this is definitely a line where white can lose without seemlying having done much wrong, I haven't fine combed this section as in far as chess positions go, the scotch gambit really is just one position. I already play a somewhat inferior line against 1..e5, I don't see the amount of study required to just get out of well-trotted lines here to be quite worth it, maybe I'm wrong though. The other parts of 1.. e5 were quite good though with interesting suggestions for white that weren't even their primary recommendation. I think the problem is that advantages in these more positional systems aren't always as clear as equality (which is why covering the black side in openings for black explained was probably much better than covering the white sides here).

Against 1.. e6 they recommended a Winawer 5th move alternative with Bd2. As a french player I was enlightened by an impressive mini-novelty they provided (although played over the board with beautiful success by author Perelshteyn. I think the recommendation was good, the strategic approach was in line with most of the other recommendations. My major disappointment here was giving the Ne7 line for black kind of straightfoward (it is the main line) and just ending with a winning position for white, which after I double checked is true, but black has some serious alternatives along the way (one recommended by Watson in Play the French) that isn't even mentioned.

Against 1..c6 they recommend the exchange variation. I like suggestion a lot. This line is less common than the main line Nc3, the panov, but still holds some punch. If black knows very well what he's doing he will be able to equalize, but there will still be a good strategic battle on the board which I think the white player will be experienced to if he's also playing other lines in this book.

Against the Pirc they recommend a quiet positional system. I like that's it's universal, I think I need to do some more exploring here to see what they're really up to, pretty much the same story for me with their center-counter lines. I guess for me these aren't really trouble since I'm a somewhat classical player who doesn't have trouble maintaining a small edge against somewhat "wrong" openings.

As for the offbeat lines, also I haven't looked at these carefully, but these tend to be where their approach of simple, solid recommendations will likely really shine giving responses that take away the opponents attempt to get his desired position which I think most of the book is pretty good at.

Anyways, for players who feel there are holes in their white repetoir I would recommend this book, especially as a kind of goto for recommendations against lesser lines. As for the big 2 of the sicilian or ruy lopez I don't have any particularly great suggestions other than if you have some time and aren't afraid of theoretical, sharp positions I would highly recommend Experts vs the Sicilian as a nice complement to try to tackle the sicilian by the horns.

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.

I'd had high hopes for this book, and they were mostly fulfilled. While this is a repertoire book, it's incredibly thorough. Based around playing 1. e4 and aiming for the Scotch Gambit (a fun opening and an old favorite of mine), it provides extensive data on how to play almost any defense Black can throw at you. There are recommended lines for major openings such as the Sicilian and the French, and minor ones such as the Philidor Defense and Latvian Gambit. Many lines contain theoretical novelties devised by co-author Roman Dzindzichashvili. The is also probably the most heavily illustrated chess book I've ever come across, with many, many diagrams not only for the main lines, but also the variations and analyses. The diagrams are clear and easy to read, and even a weak player such as I can follow along without a chessboard.

My one criticism, and I think it's important enough to cost the book one star, is that variations end without giving the reader any hint of what to do next, what plan to follow. For stronger players, this isn't a problem. But, for those new to Chess (or just those openings), a paragraph or two at the end of at least the major variations to point out likely plans would have been very handy. The book is already huge at 448 pages, so I would have preferred cutting out one of the first two chapters in favor adding text on likely plans.

Overall, however, I recommend this as a modern reference work to a large number of King-pawn openings, particularly the more obscure.

If you have the volume on the BLACK repertoire, please be warned: this WHITE repertoire is not as good as the BLACK repertoire.

In their BLACK volume Alburt/Dzinzi & Co present a classy repertoire with Sicilian & Nimzo-Indian which are lines played even by Grandmasters. Actually, Co-Author Perelshtein used this repertoire to become Grandmaster.

In this volume for WHITE however they don't live up to the same level of quality: They recommend 1.e4 and against BLACKs two most frequently played responses 1....e5 and 1...c5 they come up with the following suggestions: The Scotch Gambit against 1..e5 and the Grand Prix attack (2.Nc3/3.f4) against 1..c5.
Well, these lines may have some surprise value, but if you play 1.e4 you MUST HAVE a reliable weapon against 1..e5 and 1..c5, especially against the Sicilian as you will face it more often than all the other replies.
But if you look at their BLACK book you will find that they come to the conclusion that against the Grand-Prix-Attack (their suggestion for WHITE!) BLACK "has little to worry." So you can expect that at some stage you will have to learn something else against the Sicilian or you have to drop 1.e4 at all, because without a fighting-opening against 1..c5 your tournament results and your rating will not be too promising.

Instead of focusing on classy replies against 1..e5 and 1...c5 they rather dig into the French opening and spend some 100+ pages on that. That's the wrong focus for a 'complete repertoire' book in my opinion.

All in all maybe a reliable repertoire for players up to USCF rating 1800, but not for players above.

The first openings book I read was Winning Chess Openings by Seriwan which reccomended basically the KIA, KID, and Pirc versus everything. The advantage or this is your first 5+ moves are going to be the same every game. But Openings for White, is the perfect step up from that approach.

First some problems with this book:
1. Questionable Binding: After a very short time (of using it every day and carrying it with me) the cover started peeling off the glue on the spine. This is of course fixable, but I paid close to $30 for this book!
2. Many lines / variations are not covered. This is of course made up for by the very large number that are. When you find a line not covered in the book I just look it up and add it! However, some lines are covered a little too far, like 20+ moves... wouldn't it have been more useful to cover some other lines that were skipped?
3. Its expensive!

As far as I know this is the largest, most thorough repertoir book ever made. And I extremely like all its choices of openings. Now I can go into the opening with a sense of direction. I really enjoy playing the scotch game, grand prix attack, symetrical english (to list a few of the major lines).

If you already have a somewhat developed repteroir you will have to decide whether to get this book on your own, but IF YOU DONT HAVE A REPERTOIR or have never really studied the openings I can garantee you this book is THE PLACE TO START.

To really get everything out of this book you will need to do some memorization because we are talking about responses to nearly every single thing black can do. To that end what I have done is enter most of the book into a program called bookup, which can drill you to memorize it.

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.

This book offers a very narrow opening repertoire, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I believe that it is necessary to develop a more specific repertoire and to become an expert in one particular opening, rather than spending vast amounts of time on different openings when one would serve just fine.

This book is also easy to read, with helpful "main lines" in bold print and large chess diagrams, and then "sidelines" in regular print and smaller diagrams. This is the kind of chess book you don't need a chess board to read, which is pretty dang rare in the world of chess books. I definetly reccomend this book.

Husband started reading the book on Christmas morning and couldn't put it down! Great book for the serious chess player!!