Chess Openings For White, Explained

Apparently Alburt revealed the book and started selling it at the world open. For anyone interested, here is the repetoire:

Scotch Gambit, also covering transpositions to the Two Knights and Giuoco Piano

5. Nc3 against the Petroff

Covers responses to the Latvian/Elephant Gambits

French with 3. Nc3, and 4. Bg5 against 3..Nf6. Covers Winawer.

Exchange Caro Kann

Sicilian Grand Prix Attack

Exchange Alekhine

Covers Scandinavian

Classical Pirc/Modern with 5. h3

And I think that about covers it. Overall really interesting choices. The Petroff line I especially like. White develops quickly and castles long. The Grand Prix Attack is interesting because in their Black book they clearly state that it's not all that dangerous if you know what you are doing. It will be interesting to see how those chapters compare and to see if they cook up anything in that variation. The Scotch gambit is a Dzindi special. He has played quite a few interesting games in it.The French chapter stands to be pretty long since they have to cover 3..Nf6 4. Bg5 and then 5..Be7, 5..dxe4 and 5..Bb4. Then they have to cover a whole bunch of Winawer. I expect a sideline and not the main line Qg4 shtuff. I looked up some Dzindi games and he plays a lot of weird lines against the French. Anyway, hopefully amazon will ship the fricking book soon. 542 pages. What a fricking monster.

YESSS!!!! I wanted to play the Scotch anyway, this is perfect. Same goes for the Petroff line. 🙂 Unfortunately, I'm not sold on the Grand Prix against the Sicilian. The Alapin would have been my choice, although it is more positional and probably more difficult. The other openings I do not know well enough to have an opinion on.

I've already got the book on preorder. 🙂

The Scotch is pretty cool. I am not completely sure about the Grand Prix either, maybe they unleash one of their "Theoretical Novelties" in that chapter. Caro Exchange is kind of lame, although it's better than the French Exchange. At least the pawn structure is asymmetrical. I preordered it one of the first days you could. They have really made me angry with all this moving back crap. Although they did add over 100 pages to the book, so I guess that takes some time.

Also, the USCF website is shipping it now if you don't actually wanna wait any longer. I cancelled my preorder at amazon and bought it at full price through the USCF. I am impatient. 🙂

Yeah, the Grand Prix will probably have lots of novelties. After all, Dzindzi had a few videos on it in which he added a lot of cutting edge theory. Although, I still think theoretically, Black is just fine. The reason it was probably selected was to make the game sharper and with fewer deep positional considerations.

Originally posted by exigentsky
The reason it was probably selected was to make the game sharper and with fewer deep positional considerations.

Sounds good to me. 🙂 No surprise in the Pirc either. Dzindi put a lot of analysis, I think over the internet on a website that basically busted this line in the Pirc. Load this thing into a chess program and just have some fun with these sick variations!

[Event "Some Analysis"]
[Site "Your City"]
[Date "????.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "??"]
[Black "??"]
[Result "1-0"]
[PlyCount "??"]
[TimeControl "??"]

1. e4 d6 2. d4 Nf6 3. Nc3 g6 4. Nf3 Bg7 5. h3 O-O 6. Be3 a6 7. a4 b6 8. e5 Nfd7 9. e6 fxe6 10. Bd3 Nf6 11. h4 c5 (11... Bb7 12. h5 gxh5 13. Ng5 Qd7 14. Nxh7 Nxh7 15. Bxh7+ Kxh7 16. Qxh5+ Kg8 17. Qh7+ Kf7 18. Bh6 Rg8 19. Rh5 $1 $18) (11... Nh5 12. Ng5 Nf4 13. Bxf4 Rxf4 14. g3 Rf6 15. h5 h6 16. Nge4 Rf8 17. hxg6 Nc6 18. Ng5 Nxd4 19. Nf7 Qd7 20. Nxh6+ Bxh6 21. Qh5 $1 $18) 12. h5 Nxh5 13. Rxh5 gxh5 14. Ng5 h6 15. Qxh5 Nd7 16. Qg6 $1 $18 *

So I got my copy today, and I have to say that I dig this book! Let's see, so much to say. First off his coverage of the Scotch Gambit is extremely thorough. His recommended lines go something as followed:

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 ed 4. Bc4

Against 4..Nf6 play 5. e5 and go into the mess after 5..d5 6. Bb5 Ne4 7. Nxd4. His coverage of all blacks options are quite good.

Against 4..Bc5 he recommends 5. c3 when dxc runs into Bxf7.
After 5..Nf6 6. cd Bb4+ 7. Bd2 he covers Nxe4 and 7..Bxd2+ 8. Nxd2. 8..Nxe4 and 8..d5! are covered, with 8..d5! recieving good coverage. A new move is introduced in this line also. I haven't played this line much but apparently 9. exd5 Nxd5 10. Qb3 Nce7 11. 0-0 0-0 12. Rfe1 c6 13. Ne4 Nb6 is a critical position, upon which they recommend 14. Nc5 (TN)

They also give standard coverage of the Phillidor, Elephant and Latvian Gambits.

Against the Petroff, 5. Nc3 Nxc3 6. dxc3, followed by Be3, Qd2, and 0-0-0 is recommended. A good choice, and a nice way to spice up the rather lame Petroff.

1..e5 takes up I think around 132 pages of the book, so not too shabby at all!

The Sicilian Grand Prix Attack chapter is interesting also. They advocate the 2. Nc3 move order and 5. Bb5 instead of the not so good 5. Bc4. Pretty standard, meeting 5..Nd4 with 6. 0-0! They show some very nice ideas on how to play if blacks screws around a bit, showing very typical Grand Prix ideas with Qe1-h4, f5, Bh6, and Ng5 ideas, even if it means sacrificing some pawns.

The French chapter is long and impressive, their line being 3. Nc3 and 4. Bg5 against 3..Nf6, and 4. e5 c5 5. Bd2!? against the Winawer. I hadn't seen much of this variation before, but I really like it now that I see some typical lines. One line that caught my attention:

1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. e5 c5 5. Bd2 Ne76. Nb5 Bxd2+ 7. Qxd2 O-O 8. f4 a6 9. Nd6 cxd4 10. Nf3 Nbc6 11. Bd3 f6 12. O-O fxe5 13. fxe5 Rxf3 14. Rxf3 Nxe5 15. Qf4 Nxf3+ 16. gxf3 Nc6 17. Qf7+ Kh8 18.Kh1 g6 19. Bxg6 Qe7 20. Qf4 e5 21. Nf7+ Kg8 22. Bxh7+ Kf8 23. Nxe5+ Ke8 24.Bg6+ Kd8 25. Re1 Nxe5 26. Rxe5 Qd6 27. Qg5+ Kc7 28. Rxd5 Qf8 29. Qe5+ Kc6 30.Be4 Kb6 31. Qxd4+

While obviously not forced, I like White's pieces at move 12 anyway.

Against the Pirc, 4. Nf3 and 5. h3, a deceptively slow line where white can actually whip up some serious attacks with Be3, e5, e6, h4, Bd3, Ng5, etc...

Fairly standard Center Counter and Alekhine stuff.

Against the Caro Kann, 3. exd5 and 4. Bd3, with a strong (or so they say) improvement over the Dzindi - Karpov game played a while back.

Overall, a really good book, with much more thorough coverage of some sharp lines than I thought. The Black had some really dull lines that I wasn't feeling, but it's sister book has some interesting stuff. Easily better than any other White repetoire book out there.

im curiouse, by coverage do you mean annalysys of variations(such as a string of moves then +- or +=), or explanation of ideas. when i start studying openings more thoroghly ill probably be more interested in ideas so ill know what to do when the opening ends or my opponent makes an unbook move. is it good at explaining the plans ideas and tactics etc?

It has a great mixture of both. There are lots of explanations of key positions and what both sides are trying to do, but there are also variations with assessments and such.

ty, if it starts apearing in my local bookstores ill take a look.

Originally posted by !~TONY~!
So I got my copy today, and I have to say that I dig this book! Let's see, so much to say. First off his coverage of the Scotch Gambit is extremely thorough. His recommended lines go something as followed:

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 ed 4. Bc4

Against 4..Nf6 play 5. e5 and go into the mess after 5..d5 6. Bb5 Ne4 7. Nxd4. His coverage of all blacks opti ...[text shortened]... k has some interesting stuff. Easily better than any other White repetoire book out there.

I would change the move order a little.

Try this: 1. e4 e5 2. d4! exd 3. Nf3 ... transpose. Why this? I've found black is sometimes scared to take on d4 and puts himself into a horrible position. Furthermore, you are more likely to get familiar positions. Out of 23 games, I've had exd occur 84% of the time, d6 11% of the time and others only 5% of the time. In general, I've just won more games this way. There may also be a psychological factor to this.

"Against 4..Bc5 he recommends 5. c3 when dxc runs into Bxf7.
After 5..Nf6 6. cd Bb4+"

Here I would play e5 which is even more aggressive. 🙂