Chess Openings for White, Explained Book Review

Chess Openings for White, Explained

Lev Alburt

Chess Information and Research Center (CIRC)

 For Players of all levels (says so on the back cover, so it must be true.

Ok this book is like a staple at this time so my review will do little to alter its place on the chess scene.  This is a 543 page behemouth!  I mean seriously this thing is massive.  It’s also quite expensive at $29.95.  Hold on a second whilst I check to see if its still available on Amazon…Sweet it is and it cost $19.95 there.   this is a complete white repertoire in one book.  It goes by the variation tree method, that is there are only a few complete games, and they are all the way in the back, and don’t cover all of the lines that are in the book.  This just has sequences of moves with some explanation, but you won’t get to see the plans carried out very far with example games. 

Now although this thing is big enough to be an effective doorstop it has a copious, and I mean a copius amount of diagrams.  I mean a lot!  There are 4 per page so a bunch of the pages are actually taken up by diagrams.  This is good, because you’ll need them.

First we get 73 pages of fluff.  Now I appreciate the history of the game and all that good stuff but c’mon 73 pages.  I think that space could have been better used to put in annotated games.  Anyway the Author suggests the following lines.

Scotch Gambit as white, and gives various replies to the Two Knights Defense, Petroff and Philidor defenses.  He advocates the Grand Prix attack with 2. Nc3… 3.f4.  This is a good recommendation because it’s not too theoretical (as compared to the open Sicilians) and it frees up a lot of study time.  For me however the Grand Prix Attack is just one of those openings I never got, but I know a lot of people who use it with success.

Then we get to the French Defense.  Now the Grand Prix portion of the book is 37 pages long.  The French Defense is 104!  Now for a defense that is 3rd in popularity at the Patzer level as well as at GM level this seems like a lot to have to absorb.  Now it does make sense as he is recommending a more open and attacking repertoire than Kaufman does in his book, but it still seems like a lot of work for the number 3 defense that you are going to see.

He lumps the Center-Counter (Scandinavian) and the Caro-Kan together as they end up with similar pawn structures.  He recomeneds the exchange variation, which at first I thought was quite odd.  Most Caro players don’t even sweat this thing, as it’s thought to lead almost immediately to equality.  However it seems pretty wide open and like a good choice for an attacking player.

This book is excellent although I can’t seem to shake that problem with the French Defense.  It seems as though something else with a little less theory could have been picked.  Overall I’d say this thing is worth the money.  There are tons of diagrams and the author points out critical positions in blue print/pictures. 

There are three slight problems I could see with this book.

1) This thing was all the rage a year ago so it is possible that many people will be familiar with the lines. 

2) I looked up the line to the Alekhine, as I play it all the time as black.  The author omitted a variation that is better than the response that he gives in his book.  I found this odd as the book I got it from was published in 2004, so the info was available.  Normally I wouldn’t even mention it, but when I was going over the Alekhine section the move black is “supposed” to make didn’t make sense to me, and I immediately thought of the other move, before looking at my Alekhine book.  This may be a problem with some other lines as well.

3) The book’s binding is shitty.  I didn’t use this book that much an in under a year the book has seperated from the cover and a few pages are loose.  From a book that didn’t get used that much, well its shitty.

Despite that I would recommend this book if you are looking for one stop shopping for the white pieces.  I heard a rumor that Alburt will release another volume dealing with 1.d4, but no word yet.