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A Killer Chess Opening Repertoire
This is certainly a book for a player rated over 1200. The book tends to be a bit biased using a somewhat fixed system. The problem with following the system in the book is that it doesn’t teach lower rated players to use some of the openings that cover important tactical ideas. Therefore, after reading this book I decided that this system isn’t for me!
However, this doesn’t mean that if you are fairly advanced that this system isn’t for you! The book could use some more variations. Overall it is an ok book.
Amazon User Rating: 3 / 5
To begin with, let me state that the greatest book on chess ever written is How to think ahead in Chess by Horowitz. That book truely taught me the basic ideas of a strong opening for beginner, namely, the Stonewall Attack. Before that, I was clueless about handling 1 d4 as white.
Now that I have become more comfortable with Stonewall Attack, I have begun to recognize early moves that do not allow me to play Stonewall Attack. In fact, I am clueless on how to handle Kings Indian Defence. I clearly needed to learn a few basic strategies of dealing with early deviations from Stonewall Attack formations, So I started hunting for books. I have browsed through hundreds of books in Borders or B&N or local libraries and read reviews on Amazon.com for many more. I finally decided that A killer Chess Opening Repertoire would be a good book for me, and I did indeed order it from Amazon.com.
It has been a couple of weeks now, and I can say confidently that the joy of playing chess has increased marvelously for me. The best two chapters are the ones on Barry Attack, and Colle Zukertort system. They both provide excellent kingside attacking chances for white – I always go for kingside attack … I understand the goal much more clearly than the subtle maneuvers involved in QGD. Since I do not make mistakes in the opening with this repertoire, I end up in games that are 70+ moves long and most of the time, I am attacking the king !!! It is really fun !
An added benefit has been to adopt the same repertoire in the reversed manner when playing as black. Whenever white fianchettoes is king bishop, I play for Barry attack reversed and the game looks fantastic.
One of the good things about the book is that it includes games on early deviation that are not strong and shows how the attack crushed opponents. It is really useful because most of the time at my level, opponents do deviate from the mainline very early and I can look up how to deal with them – While I am not very good at finding the key tactics in a time crunch situation, I am good at copying the tactics – so if I already have a demonstration of the tactics involved in the situation, I can reproduce them over the board.
I have read online that Barry Attack and 150 Attack (when Black avoids d5 altogether) are covered only in this book … I still haven’t got around to learning about 150 Attack … but at my level, almost everyone plays d5 or fianchettoes … To me, this book fills the critical gap created by the How to Think Ahead in Chess. These are the only two books you will ever need for opening as white.
To summarize: If you love to play Stonewall Attack, and are looking for creating a repertoire around that, this book is for you. Stop looking around, I have done all the hardwork, save your time and just buy this one. Note: this book does not actually cover stonewall attack … for that I recommend the classic – How to Think Ahead in Chess: The Methods and Techniques of Planning Your Entire Game (Fireside Chess Library)
Amazon User Rating: 5 / 5
I found this book from Mr.Summerscale while searching for something more aggressive as white with respect to the Queen’s Gambit (I know this seems strange, but let me explain). I used to play the QG simply for 2. c4 … is generally considered the best follow-up to 1. d4 …. The most of the times I exited the opening phase with an advantage (I have a good memory
but at the very beginning of the middlegame … well … I simply didn’t know what to do! My opponents defended very calmly and very well, waiting for the right moment to counterattack and eventually win the game.
“A killer Chess Opening Repertoire” doesn’t contain a killer chess opening repertoire at all! Neither of the lines suggested by Mr.Summerscale will promise you an advantage in the opening, and if black knows what he is doing he is able to equalize without problems. But this is not a problem! The greatness of this book is simple: you are armed with a solid, reliable, difficult to crack opening system for white. You are unlikely to get caught into an opening trap, and if black doesn’t exactly know what he is doing (which is the most of the cases in Club/Tournament play) he is likely to equalize and … eventually lose the game.
Yes, through this book I learned the most important thing of chess (for me): the relation among the opening and the middlegame, and how to understand an opening THROUGH the middlegame positions it produces.
Now I hardly get an advantage in the opening against good opponents, but after the opening I know what to do very well, and I enjoy my games more.
A few remarks about the opening lines the book suggests:
a) after 1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. e3 e6 4. Bd3 c4 Summerscale suggest 5. b3 …, the Colle-Zukertort System. Don’t underestimate this opening! It is played quite frequently by GM Artur Yusupov, and if a player of this calibre play the opening, well … I can definely trust in it!
b) after 1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 g6 Summerscale suggest 3. Nc3 d5 4. Bf4 …, the Barry Attack. This is a very exciting opening system, likely to caught the “unaware but always thrustfull” KID player in obscure territory. Even the line suggested by (the great) Joe Gallagher in his “Beating the Anti King’s Indian” maybe let black to almost equalize, but brought the game on a positional ground which is certainly not what the KID player wants. And if the KID aficionado don’t know the line really well… the white fun will start!
c) against the Pirc/Modern (What? The Pirc? But I play 1. d4 …! Ok, but after 1. d4 g6 or 1. d4 d6 you MUST play 2. e4 …!) Summerscale suggest the “150 Attack”. I don’t like the name, but the name is the only thing I don’t like, and since Peter Leko agrees
I’m convinced as well! Learn to play well the “150 Attack” and you will find your opponents to change their repertoire! (BTW even Alburt and Chernin, in their “Pirc Alert!”, the bibble of the Pirc, treat the “150″ setup with great respect)
d) against the Benoni Summerscale suggest a line with d5, stating the Colle-Zukertort to be not quite good since black can delay …d5! I prefer to stick to the Colle, even if this time I prefer the Koltanowski variation, which is not covered in the Summerscale book (if you are interested, I can suggest “The Ultimate Colle” by Gary Lane)
e) against the Dutch, Summerscale suggests 2. Bg5…. Leaving apart that this line can be completely ruled out by the move order 1. d4 e6! (the exclamation mark assumes black wants to follow-up with 2. … f5, being ready for a French after 2. e4 …), I’m sorry but I don’t know very well this chapter because I play the Dutch myself as black and when faced with it as white I prefer one of the main lines. If you have no time to spend on the main line Dutch, then I think 2. Bg5… is a good choice, but you have to find something after 1. d4 e6 2. Nf3 f5.
f) against the Queen’s Indian, again Summerscale opts to leave apart the Colle-Zukertort since black can avoid …d5 for as long as he wishes. Ok, but I don’t want to learn a new line, and following a suggestion from Mr.Lane’s book (see above) I stick to the Colle-Zukertort nevertheless.
To summarize, five starts for a great book which teaches you how to study openings, and give you a very good system to start.
Amazon User Rating: 5 / 5
This book helped me immensely in winning against oponents and computers. I LOVE the Barry Attack! It’s truly amazing! It’s such a solid alternative to the Queen’s Gambit that I can develop an outright sacrificial attack with it, or slowly destroy my opponent positionally. I found I can use the Barry Attack against all queen pawn responses by black, not just when black uses a fiachetto bishop. The 150 Attack and Colle Zuckertort are also useful weapons to have in your arsenal to shock your opponents, however the Colle Zuckertort has proven ineffective against black’s fianchetto positions, so be careful. I recently had three explosive results with the Barry Attack, one against a computer, two against foes. The positions became very interesting because black castled queenside (in all three cases) and I was able to attack efficiently. However I was disappointed when I consulted the book later to find no variations of the B.A. with black castling queenside. Hopefully this will be updated in a future edition.
Amazon User Rating: 5 / 5
This is an above average chess book, but it would be a great book with an extra 20-30 pages of more detailed analysis of key lines, especially on the anti-colle section as early bishop pins from black can be very annoying (I had to use Chessmaster 2500 to figure such lines out). Overall, this book does what it promises.
Amazon User Rating: 4 / 5