Grandmaster Tony Kosten concentrates on aggressive treatments of the English - an approach that has brought him great success in tournament play. His book provides everything you need to start attacking with the English Opening, supplying players of the white pieces with a set of weapons that will equip them to challenge any opponent they face. There is an ideal balance of explanation and analysis, and practical examples illustrate the key themes.
Book Description
Grandmaster Tony Kosten concentrates on aggressive treatments of the English - an approach that has brought him great success in tournament play. His book provides everything you need to start attacking with the English Opening, supplying players of the white pieces with a set of weapons that will equip them to challenge any opponent they face. There is an ideal balance of explanation and analysis, and practical examples illustrate the key themes.
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
From the Publisher
Gambit Publications specialises in chess and has an unrivalled reputation for originality and editorial excellence. The company is owned and staffed entirely by leading chess masters and grandmasters.
About the Author
Grandmaster Tony Kosten comes from England, but has been based in France for many years. He is a regular and successful competitor in international tournaments, and is so respected in his adopted country that he has been appointed trainer for the French national team.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
61 of 62 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Dynamic English,
By mrbishope (Auckland New Zealand) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Dynamic English : The aggresive player's guide to a traditional chess opening (Paperback)
I am not a master (and probably never will be), nor do I teach students. I am merely an improving amateur player, who plays mostly Internet chess, and my goal is the giddy heights of expert level. I am also a hopelessly addicted purchaser of chess books. I own and have read the books I review and hope that my 'amateur's perspective' of a given title will prove useful to others. On with the review!
This is an opening repertoire book for the player of the white pieces, based around the English Opening (1.c4!). The author is Tony Kosten, a grandmaster with an Elo rating of 2522 at time of writing this review. According to the back-cover blurb, he comes from England but is now based in France where he is a trainer for the national chess team. My copy was published in 2001 and is 144 pages long. The opening is presented through a 'variation tree' method, which I prefer to a 'game based' method, as I find this makes a repertoire clearer and easier to absorb. Nevertheless many games and game fragments are interspersed throughout the text. There is an index of variations at the back of the book. In the introduction, Kosten states that the English is good for lazy players, as it is possible to adopt a piece set-up and subsequent plan sometimes regardless of black's moves. (Actually, upon seeing those words I felt uneasy - not another lame 'no-think' opening system! Fortunately, as I read further I realised that my fears were unfounded). The author goes on to say that certain key positions in the opening can occur through many dissimilar move orders, which renders rote learning of variations futile anyway. For Kosten, white's basic idea in the English is control of the d5 square and that to this end "... I recommend the following approach: that White play 1.c4, 2.g3, 3.Bg2 and 4.Nc3, in this order, and then decide on his subsequent moves depending on Black's reply, and on the best piece formation he needs to adopt to counter Black's chosen set-up". Kosten almost invariably gives 2.g3 as the second move for white, instead of the more usual 2.Nc3. His idea in doing so is to avoid certain heavily theoretical lines of the English, such as the Hedgehog. There is nothing 'gimmicky' about this repertoire - 2.g3 is a solid choice that is used by many English specialists. The author notes that although 2.g3 is a committal move, in the sense that white is now obligated to fianchetto the king's bishop, the benefits (avoidance of some strong lines for black) outweigh any drawbacks incurred. One feature of this book I really like is the clear and logical organization of the material, which is split into 3 broad sections. Part 1 deals with 1 ... e5; Part 2 with 1 ... c5; Part 3 with all other replies to 1.c4. Each section has a short introductory chapter discussing move orders, followed by individual chapters dedicated to each black set-up and how to respond to it. The great thing here is that at the start of each chapter Kosten takes some time to explain, with the aid of diagrams, some key features of the set-up. As an amateur player I jump for joy at this sort of thing - an explanation of typical middlegame structures arising from the opening, and guidance on how to play them! It is amazing that so few repertoire books do this. However, as helpful as this is, it is a little uneven in the Dynamic English. Some chapters have more of this strategic explanation than others, but even then it doesn't extend beyond a few pages and I'm always left wanting more. I would love to see a revised second edition containing much more of Kosten's advice about pawn structures etc. To give you a feel for the book, lets look briefly at Section 1. Firstly, 2 pages deal with general move order issues arising from 1.c4 e5, and then it's onto chapter 1 'The Botvinnik System'. This is a set-up for white when black plays the moves 2...Nc6 and 3...g6. Here Kosten spends around 6 pages discussing strategic ideas using diagrams and game fragments. As I noted earlier, this is great stuff. This is followed by around 14 pages of opening theory, mixed with a little bit of extra strategical advice. This is one of the longer chapters in the book, justified I think by the fact a Botvinnik System setup is used in other areas of the repertoire as well, such as when playing against the Dutch Defense. The remaining chapters in the first section are; 2.Grand Prix Attack Reversed (white tries to reach a Botvinnik system, 5 pages of theory); 3.Three Knights System with ...Bc5 (2 pages of strategy, 4 pages of theory); 4.Three Knights System with 4...Bb4 (similar to previous system, 3 pages of theory); 5.Dragon Reversed (1 page of strategy, 6 pages of theory with a lot of strategy mixed in); 6.Keres System (1 page of strategy, 6 pages of theory); 7.Other Second Moves For Black (9 pages of theory). Incidentally don't let the slimness of this volume fool you - having spent many hours entering these moves into Bookup, I can assure you that there is ample coverage here. Section 2, dealing with 1.c4 c5, is particularly dense with variations. I have found the Botvinnik System to be a great weapon, especially against Kings Indian Defense players, who often stubbornly stick to standard KID moves and tactics, failing to take into account the subtleties of White's setup. However as Black I have come across some White players who attempt to play the Botvinnik against everything - not a good idea! It seems to work best for me when black has fianchettoed the king's bishop and adopted a d6, e5 pawn structure. An interesting part of the repertoire is that dealing with 1...e6 and 1...c6, where black is attempting to play a non-English opening such as the Queens Gambit Declined or the Slav. Although technically the opening will not be an English Opening after either of these moves Kosten mentions in the introduction to the book that he is loath to simply state that these moves are outside the scope of the work, so he provides some lines to deal with this eventuality - some of which involve gambiting a pawn. I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with this treatment, but I like the way that it keeps the game on white's 'terms' rather than permitting transposition to a totally different opening, such as the Slav. Overall I found this book to be extremely well written and instructive. The English Opening is a major opening, and that means that as your chess develops it can grow with you. Where Kosten really succeeds with his book is in providing a 'theory-lite' key to the English by use of the early bishop fianchetto, enabling avoidance of several heavily analyzed lines. Earlier I favorably reviewed another white repertoire book, Summerscale's 'Killer Chess Repertoire For White'. I think in comparison with that book the Dynamic English is better organized and more complete in its coverage, but the variations themselves are more complex and place greater demands on one's positional skills.
23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't miss this superb book!,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Dynamic English : The aggresive player's guide to a traditional chess opening (Paperback)
GM Tony Kosten has made a brilliant little book about English Opening. It's nice to see that the author actually plays the stuff he's teaching and that he wants to share the knowledge he's been gathering through the years.Ok, it might not be the most complete English Opening book and the author admits it. But, it's a repertoire book, and basically white's formation is based on 1. c4 2. g3 3. Bg2 4. Nc3, so maybe not the most mainstream English. This book is divided into three parts: I Reversed Sicilian 1...e5 1 The Botvinnik System: 2..Nc6 and 3...g6 II Symmetry 1...c5 8 The Symmetrical Variation: ...g6 and ...Nc6 III Other first moves for black 11 The Pseudo-Grünfeld System: 1...Nf6 and 2...d5 An index of variations is also included. I strongly recommend this book for everyone willing to learn the English Opening.
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another Good Book by Tony Kosten,
By Albert Hodges (Las Vegas, NV) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Dynamic English : The aggresive player's guide to a traditional chess opening (Paperback)
I have been playing the English regularly for several years, but never played the 2. g3 lines until I read this book. Now I play 2. g3 regularly and thereby avoid many of the heavily analysed variations. As far as I can see, this is the way I should have been playing the English all along. If you want to know everything about the English, this book isn't for you; but if you want a good, aggressive, relatively simple way to play this opening, this book will point you in the right direction.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
