Standard Chess Openings, 2nd Edition [Paperback]

Eric Schiller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 7, 2002

The new definitive standard on opening play, this comprehensive guide covers every important chess opening and variation ever played and currently in vogue - more than three thousand opening strategies!  Differing from books that rely exclusively on bare notation, SCO features substantial discussion and analysis on each opening so that you understand the key opening concepts.  More than 250 completely annotated games (including a game representative of each major opening), and one thousand diagrams make this the standard reference book on openings.  784 pages

Product Details

• Paperback: 768 pages
• Publisher: Cardoza; 2 edition (May 7, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580420486
• ISBN-13: 978-1580420488
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.6 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #508,581 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Huge One Volume Reference Book - Lots of Typos, October 13, 2006

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Standard Chess Openings, 2nd Edition (Paperback)

If you own "Modern Chess Openings" and/or "Nunn's Chess Openings" you have a nice one volumne reference book, relatively free of of typos or mistakes in analysis. I would not hesitate to recommend this as an additional book to cross reference for additional analysis. Schiller's book actually has more analysis, but I would not totally trust it, with typos alone being common it puts a question to things. If you are a beginner skip owning a reference book as a first book and consider getting a book more on ideas such as "Understanding the Openings" along with "Winning Chess Traps; Tactics in the Opening" to learn the opening tactics (also recommended for intermediate players too). As said, I would recommend "Standard Chess Openings", only after owning "MCO" and/or "NCO". Opening reference books are usefull for intermediate players on up.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Large but not comprehensive - buy NCO instead!, October 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Standard Chess Openings (Cardoza Chess Books) (Paperback)

A very disappointing book. It has a lot of pages but no opening is covered in anything like real depth.

It tries to show how games develop beyond the opening, which is admirable, but often these games proceed way beyond any relevance to the position that came out of the opening and the type of play that is characteristic.

There are also enormous gaps in the coverage with no mention of almost all the main lines in openings such as Sicilian Najdorf.

These ommissions combined with very poor error checking (in some cases 1. e4 appears when it should be 1.d4) mean this is not a book I'd recommend to anyone. Not because it's THAT bad but there are much better books available.

If you want to buy a 'fat' openings book, buy Nunns Chess Openings which is in a totally different class. NCO is very comprehensive, up-to-date and the condensed text which introduces each opening gives a much better overview than Schiller's work. But then NCO is authored by three leading grandmasters, among others ...

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very disappointing, December 27, 2001

By 

"ha-mevaker" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Standard Chess Openings (Cardoza Chess Books) (Paperback)

I consider myself an average chess player, that is I play at what I estimate to be 1400 - 1600 ELO. I do not consider myself an expert an eny opening, but am comfortable with a couple of openings mainly the Roy Lopez, Guico Piano, and QP openings.
I was hoping that his book would help me learn the basics of some more openings, the way that Chernev's Logical Chess helped me with the QP openings. This book was a complete disapointment, I didn't learn a thing from it. The main problems I had with it were the lack of explanation to each opening and the basic format. The basic format of the book is to take one game and use this game to show the main variations in the opening. I found that this made it hard to use.