Opening

Another stupendous effort from a World Champion. Id rather watch Airport 77 with jack lemmon than sift through these mindless opening variations.

I normally do not like openings manuals, but if you must have one, this is a better choice than MCO. In fact, it is a cross between MCO and a typical Schiller openings encyclopedia. It has very convenient, full-page tables of suggested moves for each opening discussed, and the discussions include ideas, variations, and sample games.

The advice is aimed at club players, which is something I like very much, as opposed to NCO (or even MCO) which contains best lines for masters.

The openings here are not all off-the-wall gambits, although many of those are included. Fairly standard and common open games are here too -- the Spanish Exchange, for example. In fact, the book is mis-titled. It is really about all open games, not just offbeat ones.

The best thing about the book is the use of ! and ? in the tables. They actually list common blunders and refutations, unlike most such tables which list only "best" play. The idea is to suggest lines which you can play with reasonable confidence as a club player, and to point out the likely pitfalls for both sides, in a very easy-to-use format.

If you want to learn to play open games, I suggest reading the open games in Best Lessons of a Chess Coach first, then Unbeatable Chess Lessons for Juniors. But eventually, if you are looking for a simple way around an annoying line favored by an opponent at your local club, this is a good place to look. If the authors produce a volume on closed games too, then I would say that the set is the best openings reference for decent club players.

If this were on CD (in Chessbase or PGN) instead of in a book, I would give it 5 stars.

This book presents 58 games, all played by Gary Kasparov, that either start out as or transpose into the English opening. Gary played both sides of the board roughly equally, 30 games as white and 28 as black. He won 15 as white and 13 as black, lost only four (2 as each), and naturally drew the rest. All of this is fine, I now have 58 games played by Kasparov (from the years 1978 - 1991) against opponents of similar skill. The problem is there isn't much more to the book then that.

The title says there will be commentary, and there is. The editor comments on how deadly Kasparov is while either playing or playing against the English opening. The editor comments about the lack of up-to-date scholarly analysis of the English opening. The editor includes a response to an article (and the original article itself) that states the above. All of this is very interesting, don't get me wrong, but I got the book to help me learn the English opening. What I was expecting when the title said commentary was annotations and comments about the various moves in the games themselves, and that I didn't get. In the editor's defense he was very up front about this and about why he didn't include them, unfortunately that was in the introduction. It is difficult to read a book's introduction when you are buying it on line.

So am I happy with the book? Overall, yes. Do I find the book helpful? Again, yes. Is it for the casual chess player? Well, for the novice and the casual player, there are probably much better books to start with. If you are interested in studying some interesting games using the English opening, you could do a lot worse then this book.

I'm not sure if it was my expectations about this book or the execution, but "What a Question" was rather underwhelming. I found it in a library using a search for books on conversation and how to have better conversations. The book is nothing more than a list of questions that can be asked in conversation. That's it. There are about 300 questions, and the book is broken up into sections where questions about related topics will all be grouped together. The problem was that many of the questions were not very interesting and I can hardly imagine asking them. There were a few questions that I felt I might want to ask, and I wrote those down, but as a whole the book was a waste of my time. It seemed like the questions were for if you were at a dinner party with a group of people you don't know and needed a random question to move the conversation. If you want a book that is a list of questions, this one may be for you, but I fear that I can't recommend this book.

This is an attractive book in soft cover format (192 pages). It is written by a very experienced chess writer, who, in addition to decent material, uses a very colorful language, using frequently chess jargon and idioms.

I remember in the beginning of my chess playing career, carrying his book on the same subject with me to many junior tournaments. The idea was, that when preparing for a game or studying a certain opening, one can consult the book and quickly find tactical tricks common for that opening.

For example, if you play Caro Can as Black, you must know 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nd2(c3) dxe 4.Ne4 Nbd7 (planning Ngf6) 5.Qe2!? (not too wise to block the bishop on f1, but...) Ngf6 (continue normal plan) 6.Nd6# - several experienced players have fallen in this trap in the past, but now even beginner knows this, thanks to the books, like Neishtadt's.

Well, remembering my childhood experience, I was very excited when I knew that this book is coming out. I even notified my mailing list subscribers about it.

However, once I got chance to read through this book, I have found the following flaws, that if addressed, would make this book so much better.

All of the examples are categorized by tactical motif and not by the Opening. So, if you are studying a particular opening, you should continuously flip through the pages to find tricks for that opening. Index helps, but the process is not user friendly.

Game materials & Examples - Outdated for this book, released in 2002, the latest games are from the mid 90s.

Direct word for word translation of russian idioms makes reading comments somewhat difficult. This was confirmed by several of my american born students.

Overall, good book for beginners learning Openings and basic tactics.

Good luck!
Copyrighted by me.

I will say this book is very outdated to say the very least... Still maybe for 9 dollars its not a bad idea to consider picking it up... Basically this book does not even know about the Portugeuse Gambit... Also it does not cover many lines that you run into with Scandy... Not to mention the covrage of the Icelandic Gambit(Palme) should of been more than 7 pages... They do not cover weird second moves by white, which is really annoying to say least... Also they do not have anything for 3 Nf3 by white, which happens more than other moves listed... How can you call a book Winning with something if you lack decent coverage of it... The book has about 8 pages for the Scandanavian Gambit, which really should get more... They give the Panov-Botvinnik attack about 13 pages... So if that is something you need to look at, that might be useful... So this is about an average book on the topic... Your most likely better off getting the Scandanavian book by Emms... Still for 9 dollars this might be worth it if you can find it...

This was one of the first books I purchased just after joining the Army many years ago. It will show you a few tricky openings but will do nothing to improve your understanding of the game. If you want a book that has the potential to advance your knowledge of the game then this is not what you are looking for. At least 90% of chess books don't teach you anything and were just thrown together to make money. This book was published by Fireside Chess Library. Fireside published many terrible chess books so buyer beware.

Avoid this one....
It's a very basic book aimed at low level players, showing a range of the e4-e5 openings. In each example, it follows the standard opening, then one side makes an error (Usually suicidal in nature.) allowing the opposition to mate or at least obtain an overwhelming advantage in the next 1-2 moves. Pandolfini gives the instruction on how to do this.
As mentioned by everyone else the book is packed with errors, i.e. diagram 1, the black knight f6 is missing, diagram 149 white has 3 rooks etc... the list goes on and on.
You will spend you time wondering why a) someone would make that error and b) why you wasted money on the book.
i gave it 2 stars, because its cheap, the advice is reasonable and it does show various patterns, within the openings. It's a nice idea for a book, its just this one is terribly done. dont waste your money

This is a great book for drilling opening tactics. Just flip it open, look at the diagram, and figure out the best move. Typically, the opponent has just played a horrible move which allows you to decimate his forces immediately.

Why is this useful? Can you use these ideas to ensnare your own opponents? Probably not, and that's not smart chess anyway. This book is useful primarily for improving your pattern recognition of the various attacking motifs in the opening -- SO THAT YOU CAN AVOID THEM!

Sure, if you play another novice, it can be fun to look for ways to induce him into one of these blunders, but eventually, as your opposition improves, you will become frustrated at falling into these same traps yourself.

After you spend some time on this book, you will begin to notice when your opponent can fork your pieces, or win material with a sudden check by his Queen, etc.

Pandolfini's commentary is sometimes helpful as advice on avoiding the traps, and it is always enthusiastic.

Though the others are good too, this book is the best of Pandolfini's trap books for beginners. These are all dual-king pawn openings (1.e4 e5) which typically produce the highly tactical games that beginners can learn the most from. The traps are comprehensible but not obvious for beginners. And the format here is somehow the most pleasing.

Only 4 stars b/c of errata, but the errors do not really get in the way.

This book could have been much better. The target of the book is the beginner/intermediate player ( 800-1600 elo points ), and deals with opening mistakes, the way to avoid them or take advantage of them. In fact, all the examples are very good, as well as the explanations that are also very clear because they point out where the mistake was made.

The only problem is that Pandolfini put together all the examples according to the winning move ( Qh5/Axf7/etc ), instead of the opening line.

It is fair to say that you can find an index at the end of the book with all the examples classified by opening, but following the reading of the book with it is not very comfortable. But I strongly recommend this way of reading to take advantage of the material, because you can focus on the opening lines that you play regularly or the ones that you want to improve.

The title is not quite accurate. This is really a book of opening traps. The explanations are not nearly so helpful as the traps themselves.

Unfortunately, this book is not nearly so useful as Pandolfini's other trap books. As another reviewer stated, the traps here are categorized by the winning move, e.g. Bxf7 or Qh5. That makes the book useless for drilling tactics, as the winning move is already named in boldface at the top of the page. Also, the diagrams do not always follow the blunder immediately.

However, this book has the broadest coverage of the three, with maybe 25% non-king pawn openings. Perhaps you could cut out the pages and clip off the headings, then go through these in random order.

Definitely read the Traps and Zaps books first. I find this one valuable in improving my pattern recognition still further, as I can go through several examples of a single motif in one sitting, but you might consider skipping this one altogether nd going straight to the deeper traps in Chernev's wonderful Winning Chess Traps, then on to Burgess's Quickest Chess Victories of All Time.

This book seems to have fewer errors than the others, so I give it 4 stars.

This book has gotten some undeserved bad press. This book simplifies the avoidance of falling into elementary traps. There are a bunch of books about the various traps, but they aren't systematic, and, therefor, they are impossible to remember. Here the traps are systematically presented and easy to spot. Most of the traps involve checks and hanging pieces. The book also teaches the pluses of early aggressive Queen moves. I found it very informative and have avoided falling into some of the traps in my games. It also teaches you to take advantage of the opponent's mistakes. If you are getting boloed in the opening, take alook at this book.

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.

The negative reviews miss the point of this book: nowhere does Schiller recommend that you play these openings; rather, he is saying that if you choose to play gambits as white, here is a repoeroire that you may find suitable. I think this book is quite well done. The main use I have made of it is as a quick reference when I am playing black and I see these gambits pop up on the white side. I have found this book to be very helpful in refuting some of these gambits. The negative I have with these books is that they don't have a moves index; but I find that the analysis is very helpful and seems thorough. Plus, these are fun books and I find myself picking it up qauite a bit, which is more than I can say for some "classics." The fact is, that these openings rae used a lot in internet chess, so it pays to prepare for them, especially when you can pick this book up used for a song.

I find Schiller's style to be engaging and practical. He is completely about ideas and understanding. If you are a 1. c4, 1. g3, 1. Nf3, or 1. d3 player, it makes sense to know the Reti, and this is the best book with which to do that. This is a very enjoyable book.

This book is even worse than the first one! I can't believe they published a second book. Fireside Chess Library will publish anything! If you want to improve at the game of chess then you want to avoid this book and seriously question any book published by Fireside Chess Library. Did anyone with a high school diploma even read this before it was printed? Writing a book does not make you a good author...writing 100 books makes you no better....Bruce needs to give it up and just stick with writing solitaire chess games for Chess Life. Do you want to know who CAN write? Silman, Soltis, Chernev, Nomzovich, Baburin, Evans....and many more Use extreme caution when you see names like Eric Schiller, Horowitz, Pandolfini, Reinfeld...and others. (Reinfeld did hit one home run with "The Complete Chessplayer")

This book had a great idea. Show intermediate-level players (like me) how to improve their game by showing common opening mistakes, how to avoid them, and how to take advantage of your opponents' mistakes. I found the first book, and after playing through some of the examples, I noticed that the Sicilian and French were not even mentioned.

Then, I noticed here that there is a sequel.

Compared to the first book, this one is dismal. Comments on errors and poor play have shrunk to only one-half of the commentary in the first book, and rarely actually explains where the loser screwed up, instead offering adages which sometimes are as obvious as "Don't bring your queen out so early." The only reason I bought this book was that it covered the Sicilian defense and French defense, which were omitted in the first book.

Not as good as it previous book but still with valuable tools. When I hear about all the others criticize this book the way they do, it appears that they do not see the author's point (and no my name isn't Bruce). This book is focused more on early traps as stated and not so much on opening repertoires. If you utilize this book move by move explicitly to 'sucker punch' your opponent, then, yes, obviously this book will not meet your expectations. But if it is used to clean up your own act in the openings and also to learn the different trap "ideas" as opposed to every single move by "the book" then perhaps there is something to learn. Maybe not the best for opening, but a legitimate book for traps.