Opening Books

Playing the Trompowsky

The Trompowsky — 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5 — is the great theory-dodger’s weapon. By pinning or harassing the knight on move two, White sidesteps the Nimzo-Indian, the Grünfeld, and the King’s Indian in one stroke, avoiding the deep, well-trodden main lines those defences demand and steering the game into fresh, creative, and genuinely complex positions instead.

Richard Pert — a Trompowsky specialist who has played it for years — turns that idea into a complete White repertoire. He works systematically through Black’s replies, from the solid 2...e6 and the combative 2...c5 to the immediate 2...Ne4 and the structural 2...d5, giving a clear recommendation and the typical plans in each case, and he also covers the related 2.Bg5 systems against the Dutch and against 1...d5.

The appeal is practical: the amount of theory you must learn is modest, the resulting middlegames reward understanding and imagination over memorisation, and you will routinely take better-prepared opponents out of their comfort zone early. Pert’s recommendations are ambitious without being unsound — he is happy to fight for an advantage rather than settle for a quiet game.

A sound, low-maintenance opening for club players and above who want an aggressive, off-beat answer to 1...Nf6 and would rather play chess than recite the latest 25-move main line.

Wojo's Weapons, Volume 2

The late Aleksander Wojtkiewicz was one of the most successful tournament grandmasters of his era — a player who racked up wins year after year with a compact, repeatable White system rather than a sprawling theoretical repertoire. This series preserves and teaches that "Wojo System," and Volume 2 carries it forward into the heart of the Queen’s-Pawn battleground.

The backbone is the Catalan, reached via the flexible 1.Nf3 and g3 move orders Wojo favoured. The book gives a complete, layered treatment of both the Closed Catalan and the Open Catalan — the latter examined in real depth, line by line — and then extends the same fianchetto approach to the Slav, the Queen’s Gambit Accepted, the Tarrasch, and the Chigorin.

What makes the material so practical is its coherence: the same bishop on g2, the same pressure on the long diagonal and the c-file, and the same handful of plans recur across every line, so the repertoire is far easier to learn and maintain than its scope suggests. The authors explain how to assemble the pieces of the system into a working whole.

A sound, grandmaster-tested White repertoire for club players and above who want to win the way Wojo did — quietly building pressure and grinding out the point. It is the second of three volumes in the Wojo’s Weapons: Winning With White series; this book concentrates on the ...d5 and ...e6 defences (the Catalan and the Queen’s-Gambit family), while the companion volumes cover the rest, so the three together form the complete repertoire.

Club players looking to master an efficient, safe, and practical White repertoire will benefit from this highly readable book

If you play chess for blood, it makes sense to learn the violent tactics that feature in the openings that you play.

Far from a dusty relic once played by great masters such as Rubinstein, Pillsbury and Bogolyubov, the Zukertort System now enjoys new life.

The Benoni Defense can be divided into two main structures…

The final, and eagerly awaited, volume of the series will complete the opening repertoire for White according to Wojo.

In this book the reader will find an opening repertoire for Black against 1. e4, based on the Petroff Defence and designed to be used up to the highest level.

Igor Lysyi: “I worked hard at mastering 1…е7-е5 for Black….

A complete black repertoire with 1.e4 e5 against everything except the Ruy Lopez by Igor Lysyj and Roman Ovetchkin

A completely updated edition which presents a Black repertoire based on the French.