Customer Reviews

The King's Indian for the Attacking Player (Batsford Chess Library) (Openings)

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I have been playing the King's Indian against 1.d4 for about three years. I started out using the lines suggested by Gufeld in his book "The Art of the King's Indian". After a few months I found out that I usually ended up in uncomfortable positions in some of the lines. For example, I had huge problems getting effective counterplay in the now very popular line 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.Nf3 0-0 6.Be2 e5 7.0-0 Nc6 8.d5 Ne7 9.b4!

Luckily I found Burgess's book, which provided me with more active lines and turned out to improve my results considerably against this queen pawn opening. The book also covers the Classical Lines, including the one mentioned above, but it gives Black extra weapons to vary from this line if you find it awkward. Several of the variations are crafted around the idea of developing the knight through a6 instead of c6. For example, one alternative in the Classical Variation would be to play 6...Na6!?

The other great idea I found in this book is the pawn sacrifice against the Samisch Variation. After browsing through the book and seeing this line, I played through the variations in a study session. A couple of weeks after, I was playing in a blitz tournament against a player with a rating of 2100 (I was 1800) and he played the Samisch. I decided to give the pawn sacrifice a try and won convincingly. After the game he told me that he always had trouble with that line. Needless to say that I have also lost countless games playing the pawn sacrifice, but at least it is fun to play and gives Black great opportunities for counterattack.

I have found this book a lot more useful than Gufeld's, and the very few weak points it has, can be complemented by "The Art of the King's Indian" or by "Bronstein on the King's Indian". Overall, I give the book 4.5 stars!