Customer Reviews

The Ideas Behind the Chess Openings

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If you are a beginner or a casual player with this book you will be able to improve your game and play strongly in the openings, because the author instead of making you memorize any series of moves or variations, emphasizes on teaching the objectives you seek when you use an specific opening, allowing you to have a complete and better understanding of this phase of the game.

If you are an experienced or already an strong opening player your game will benefit more from a modern standard opening book.

The book is organized in eigth chapters as follows:

- General Principles.
- e-pawn Openings: 1 e4 e5.
- e-pawn OPenings: 1 e4 others.
- d-pawn Openings: 1 d4 d5.
- d-pawn Openings: 1 d4 others.
- Reti and English Openings.
- Bird's Opening and Nimzowitsch's Attack.
- Irregular Openings.

It has been said that ideas are weapons, this is especially true in chess. For someone just entering into the world of chess, a mastery of a little theory that conveys real understanding of the game could be infinitely more valuable than a carefully memorized compilation of endless moves.

I agree with another reviewer in that you may want to consider "Understanding the Chess Openings" by Sam Collins, but be aware that It costs almost twice. So if you are a Newcomer to Openings you will benefit a lot from any one of the two books, this one is cheaper, the other one is updated.

I am a casual player and in my case I found also useful the book "How to play the chess openings" by Eugene A. Znosko-Borosky. Each major opening is detailed and analyzed with emphasis on explanations that are easy to follow, paying special atention to traps.

Looking at standard opening books killed my enthusiasm for chess. It is absurd to know all of them. My little head is not capable of crunching all those lines. But Fine's book on chess openings is more beginner friendly. It taught me the ideas behind the chess openings and how to play them. The book puts more emphasis on originality and artistry which I believe is pretty much lacking with most opening chess books I've seen.

Fine wrote this book essentially as a companion to his opening manual back in the forties. It has a great deal to recommend it but cannot stand alone in the modern arena. Despite Fine's claim in his preface to the eighties edition, that nothing needed revision at that time, the work on the King's Indian defense and the Sicilian (two of the most important defenses) are essentially useless. For a more contemporary appreciation of the ideas behind opening theory, Suetin's Modern Chess Opening Theory (written in the fifties) stands up much better and Bronstein's book of the 1953 Zurich candidates tournament better still. One or both ought to be read as companion works.

For the general King and Queen Pawn players, this book may have something to offer. However, the approach is far too dogmatic for today's styles. 10 basic rules are given and Rule #1 is: Open with either the e or d pawn. Rule #5 states: Make one or two pawn moves in the opening, not more. Rule #7: Castle as soon as possible, preferably on the king's side. The other rules make more sense, but these 3 examples are quite barbaric unless you are going to play mainline variations of the Ruy Lopez for example. The last chapter (ONE WHOLE PAGE) addresses irregular openings, giving one example of 1.g6 for Black as the irregular opening. I never realized the Modern defence was 'irregular'. This 1989 release is a republish of the 1943 book Fine put out with the more updated algebraic notation. Please don't waste your hard earned money on this.