Customer Reviews

Gambit Opening Repertoire For White (Essential Opening Repertoire)

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As an intermediate club player, I love the attack! And I was very excited to find this book when it first came out. The book promises an 'In Depth Guide to Powerful Opening Repetoires'. Unfortunately, it is not in depth, nor reasonably complete, or particularily powerful. At one stage the author is so brazen as to actually give about 4 pages of treatment for a black defense, examining only 1 or 2 possible lines, and then says to the reader that if you want to learn the opening you should go read a book by another author!

I wish to be fair to Mr Schiller, and I realize that no 'repetoire as white/black book' can hope to adequately treat the majority of possible opening lines, but he grossly abuses this liberty beyond my wildest dreams.

The book's back cover makes promises of 'DESTROY ANY BLACK DEFENSE!'. And yet Mr Schiller freely admits that a number of the gambit lines he offers really are inferior! As gambit players we are willing to take chances, but we have to wonder what an author is really offering us when he admits that a # of his own lines are bad.

It seems yet again that Mr Schiller's efforts are more focused on inflated promises designed to gather your dollars then on making any reasonable effort to provide the goods.

The book's promises are misleading, many of the lines are particularily poor, and there is little that is 'in depth'. I could almost tolerate the substandard product if Mr Schiller was not so deceptive in his bold faced promises that he plasters across the front and back cover of this book.

If you are curious about gambits, get "The Complete Book of Gambits", don't bother getting this. First of all, the reportoire isn't even complete. For example, 1.e4 e5 he gives only the Goring Gambit accepted and Declined. What says that Black will play 2...Nc6 (you have players that play the Petroff, the Philador, and even I have played the Latvian Gambit occasionally). Also, he'll take an unsound gambit, and try to make it sound. For some defenses, there just isn't a good gambit, why force the issue. Also, he has no sources to back himself up. No complete games. No Nothing. Next time you go book browsing, bypass this one!!

Aggressive nonconformists looking for unusual, little played or unpopular openings to ambush or irritate their opponents might find some interesting variations here. The openings that Schiller recommends are not, he admits, generally highly regarded but do lead to interesting play that may not be solvable over-the-board by a non-GM fighting the clock and an unusual line. Not a complete gambit repertoire to every possible Black line, the book gives ten gambits for 1.e4. About 70 pages of the approximately 183 text pages cover the Goring Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 ed 4. c3). The Sicilian Defense is met by the Halasz Gambit (1. e4 c5 2. d4 cd 3.f4 Nc6 4. Nf3 Qb6) and presented in 10 pages. The French Defense meets the Alapin Gambit (1.e4 e6 2. d4 d4 3.Be3 de 4. Nd2 Nf6 5.f3) with 4 pages of variations. Schiller discusses the Ulysses Gambit to the Caro-Kann (1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nf3 de 4.Ng5 Nf6 5.Bc4) in about 4 pages. The second longest coverage is the Short Attack to the Pirc Defense at about 23 pages (1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 g6 4.Bc4 Bg7 5.Qe2 Nc6). Schiller also covers the Modern Defense, Czech, Alekhine, Scandinavian, and Owen. Personally, my own non-master view is ambivalent about this book. On the plus side, you'll get some interesting positions and force yourself and your opponent to think. On the negative side, you'll frequently be down a pawn with very nebulous compensation and some of the gambits just don't have that much "shock" value. For example, the Alapin Gambit to the French, seems impressive mostly if you follow Schiller's variation. If you have Watson's Play The French: Second Ed., Watson's footnote to the Alapin gives 5...Nd5! 6.Qe2 Ne3 7.Qe3 ef 8.Ngf3 Be7 "and White has no compensation," and this response isn't hard to see over the board. The only advantage then is that the Black player doesn't play a typical French like he'd hoped (but he doesn't have a pawn.) Look at this book at your bookstore first, then decide.

I think that the "surprise" gambit value of most of these openings will be minimal; not because they're well-known but because they're generally not difficult to handle over-the-board. For example, the recommended White variation against the French Defence: 1 e4 e5 2 d4 d5 3 Be3 dxe4 4 Nd2 Nf6 5 f3 was easily handled by my 1450 opponent: 5... Nd5 6 Qe2 Nxe3 7 Qxe3 exf3 8 Ngxf3 Be7 which turned out to be the same response Watson gives in "Play the French" with the comment "White has no compensation." Often, you don't even get the fun of having the initiative or an attack to compensate you for your sacrificed material! If you buy this book, be aware that you'll often be more hard-pressed proving your gambit's worth than your opponent will be proving it faulty. This will happen often because you're given (with certain notable exceptions, like the anti-Pirc defence) only two or three pages of info. However, for non-aggressive players like myself, there is a training benefit to be gained from openings that force you to play aggressive sharp moves to avoid winding up a pawn (or two) down in an unwinnable endgame and to that extent, this book is worth it. Just don't expect to win because of these openings.

The back cover proudly states: DESTROY ANY BLACK DEFENSE. I'm sure the gambits recommended in this book would be sufficient to destroy any Black Defense played by a sufficiently weak player, but who needs this book--or any book for that matter--to beat such a player? Even assuming this book is intended for average players looking to steal a few points from their own kind, the question still remains: Are these gambits good enough for even that modest task? For the most part, they are not. Even author Schiller admits that he doesn't have anything that meets his "standards" to recommend against the Scandinavian. He says that if you really must play a gambit after 1.e4 d5 (why else would we buy such a book, if not to learn something about some sort of gambit against a move that is played very often at the sub-Master level?), go ahead and try your luck with the Tennison Gambit, which continues 2. Nf3?! fxe4 3. Ng5. What I find peculiar is that, rather than offer this dubious gambit, why not recommend transposing to the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit with 2. d4? It's not very good either, but at least it isn't the sort of thing your typical Class C player can refute over the board. The author managed to get his books published and widely distributed by Cardoza Publications, better known for their books on gambling. I don't know if all of Schiller books are as terrible as this one, as I am not masochistic enough to read all of them; however, I have taken the time to examine most of his Cardoza books, and none of them are any better than this one. The book's jacket proclaims its author THE WORLD'S LEADING AUTHORITY ON OPENINGS. I would wager that,if he is an authority on anything, it is self-promotion. With all the bad grammar, misspellings and typos in this dreadful book, one gets the impression that his books are written at a blitz pace and not proofread at all. I suppose the author figures that, as long as people are dumb enough to buy such trash, he has no reason to try to write something good. I suggest that, if you intend to purchase any books from this publisher, stick to the ones on gambling. This book is no gamble; if you buy it, you are a sure loser. And--since you ask--no, I didn't buy it. I read most of it while hanging out at the bookstore's coffee shop.