"Starting Out" or "Play the..."

The starting out: Dutch defence & Sicilian are both very good, covering a lot of ground & giving a good grounding in both openings.

Originally posted by wittywonka
Which chess book series would you reccommend? I am considering buying a few openings books. In general, would you reccommend the "Starting Out" series, or the "Play the ..." series?

I have a couple of "Starting Out" books.

Whilst they may be a little thin on details thaey are well laid out and it is easy to get the ideas behind the various lines.

In many ways that is more important than masses of detail with little explanation.

You can always supplement them with a good DB.

Lol, there are so many conflicting opinions...

But thanks for the suggestions.

Originally posted by wittywonka
Lol, there are so many conflicting opinions...

But thanks for the suggestions.

In the case of the french, the Play the french book by Watson (3rd edition) is excellent, but it is a repertoire book so you only get the authors top two choices of lines for each variation.

Originally posted by zebano
In the case of the french, the Play the french book by Watson (3rd edition) is excellent, but it is a repertoire book so you only get the authors top two choices of lines for each variation.

A friend of mine thinks that blacks strategy in the frech is to bore his opponent to death. It is all wery interesting but a bit to slow for my taste. I think a beginner would do much better in learning another defence to e4 than the french since most lines lead to a closed center and therefore less tactics. I know some of you have heard this a tousand times but for those who havn't...