The Morra Gambit — 1.e4 c5 2.d4 cxd4 3.c3 — is one of those openings that club players love and serious study books tend to dismiss. Marc Esserman disagrees. An international master and the foremost English-language expert on the Morra, he has used this gambit to defeat multiple 2700-rated grandmasters, and in this book he makes his case that the resulting positions are genuinely dangerous for Black at any level.
White sacrifices a pawn on move three for rapid piece development and persistent attacking chances. Esserman covers all the main defensive tries Black can employ, explaining both the tactical themes and the positional resources when the attack does not land immediately.
Crucially, the Morra Declined is covered too — 3...Nf6 and other cautious tries — so you have a complete answer to 1...c5 without needing a separate Sicilian repertoire alongside it.
Esserman writes with personality and obvious enthusiasm for the opening. Intermediate players looking for a sharp, principled weapon against the Sicilian will find 360 pages of exactly that here.
Playing the Petroff
The Petroff Defence — 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 — has a rock-solid reputation, tested and trusted by a long line of World Champions, precisely because it is so structurally sound and hard to crack. This book shows how a club player can harness that same reliability with Black.
Young Indian grandmaster and theoretician Swapnil Dhopade builds the repertoire around practicality. Rather than the sprawling, ever-shifting main lines, he offers a compact yet "bulletproof" set of recommendations, drawing on the games of the leading Petroff specialists, so you get a defence that is both theoretically robust and realistic to learn and maintain.
Crucially, the book also covers the lines where White sidesteps the symmetrical main road — the Anti-Petroff tries, in particular the popular 2.Bc4 and other 1.e4 e5 systems that avoid 2.Nf3 — so you have a complete, ready-to-play answer to 1.e4 e5, not just to the pure Petroff.
An ideal solution for the practical player who wants a sound, low-risk, low-maintenance defence to 1.e4. Best suited to club players and above who value solidity and a manageable workload.
The author writes:
"This book offers a full repertoire based on the Taimanov move order 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nc6! 5.Nc3 Qc7. It is especially effective against the English attack and early kingside pawn storms. However, the fianchetto 6.g3 and the Classical system with 6.Be3 a6 7.Be2 pose certain problems. I propose to meet them with the Scheveningen set-up ...d6. Thus we take the best of two different worlds.
In 2014 I wrote The Most Flexible Sicilian with Delchev. It was based on my coauthor’s repertoire, with a focus on the Kann (without Nc6). On the opposite, I have always preferred the Scheveningen set-up whenever possible. The biggest problem is to avoid the Keres Attack and the system with f4, Qf3. The Taimanov move order is perfect for that aim.
My new book practically does not overlap with The Most Flexible Sicilian or with Pavlidis’ The Sicilian Taimanov as I recommend other lines, which are better or keep more tension, in my opinion.
I have been a devoted Sicilian player all my life and I have played at least 10 000 blitz games featuring 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6. Since a good half of them featured 3.c3, 3.g3, 3.d3 or other anti-Sicilians, I included these lines in the book."
Understanding Before Moving: Part 1
What actually matters in the opening? Which plans are available, and what hidden ideas are concealed in the position you reach just as the opening ends? Those questions — far more useful to an improving player than another twenty moves of memorised theory — are the subject of Herman Grooten’s series, and Part 1 applies them to the Ruy Lopez and Italian structures.
Grooten’s premise is that you should understand before you move: grasp the typical pawn structures and the plans they dictate, and the individual moves start to make sense on their own. The book opens with chapters on how to study openings and what really goes on "behind the scenes," then builds a clear overview of the structures arising from the Ruy Lopez and the Italian Game.
The ideas are then cemented through carefully chosen model games — where you see the plans played out in full — and a set of exercises to test your understanding.
A genuinely instructive bridge between raw opening theory and practical middlegame play, ideal for club players who keep reaching the middlegame with no idea what to do. Part of an ongoing series covering the major structures.
Beating Minor Openings
offers a world-class repertoire for Black against every sensible first move apart from 1.d4 and 1.e4. GM Victor Mikhalevski advocates an ambitious approach for Black, with the aim of occupying the center and fighting for an advantage, rather than mere equality, wherever possible.
This book presents a multi-faceted approach to the Reti – 1.Nf3 d5, followed by c2-c4. The core of the proposed repertoire is the topical system 2.e3 Nf6 3.c4 and 2.e3 c5 3.c4 d4 4.b4. Play often transposes to the English Opening with White having sidestepped 1.c4 e5.
For those who do not like the Reversed Blumenfeld and seek clear strategic play, the author adds three chapters on the Nimzo-Larsen System 1.Nf3 d5 2.e3 c5 3.b3. With this move order White prevents ...d4 altogether.
The book also covers 1.Nf3 d5 2.c4 d4 3.b4, which opens the door towards the main lines of the QGD and the Slav. It does allow the challenging 3...f6 4.e3 e5 or 3...Bg4, but is the only option if White prefers schemes without e2-e3, as 1.Nf3 d5 2.c4 e6 3.d4 and 2...c6 3.d4 Nf6 4.Nc3.
The choice on move 2 and 3 should be based on reader’s preferred way of meeting the Slav, the Queen’s Gambit Declined and the QGA.
Semko Semkov is a chess journalist and theoretician, with two GM norms. His most famous books are The Modern English, The Most Flexible Sicilian, The Taimanov-Sheveningen Hybrid, Understanding the QGA.
In the last of three volumes on 1.e4, GM John Shaw completes his state-of-the-art White repertoire by tackling the biggest challenge of all: the main lines of the Sicilian Defence. Including the Dragon, Taimanov, Sveshnikov and concluding with the nefarious Najdorf, this book provides everything you need to face all the major Sicilian systems with confidence.
In this book Victor Bologan covers all relevant lines with a well laid-out, clearly explained and eminently playable set of responses. He presents TWO different options against every main line: a common sense approach and an aggressive weapon.
The Nimzo-Indian Defence stands as one of the most trusted and reliable systems for Black against 1.d4, maintaining its reputation for over a century. It has been an important weapon for many World Champions including Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov, Anand, and Carlsen.
In this volume of the Grandmaster Repertoire series, GM Michael Roiz presents a complete opening repertoire for Black after 3...Bb4.
Key Features:
About the Author:
GM Michael Roiz is an elite Israeli Grandmaster and coach who once reached the top 40 worldwide with a peak rating of 2680. He is a prolific and highly respected author whose theoretical works in the Grandmaster Repertoire series are considered definitive. He also served as a primary second for Boris Gelfand during the 2012 World Championship match.
The Scandinavian Defence is one of the most popular chess openings among amateur players, and it is easy to see why. Black players immediately limit the opening theory they have to know because there is no way White can side-step Black’s first move. What’s more, the Scandinavian requires only very little theoretical knowledge, so it has an extremely low maintenance factor. To cap it all, Black gets a solid structure. And that’s not even the end of the good news, as Thomas Willemze demonstrates in this compact and practical manual. Playing the Scandinavian teaches invaluable techniques that you can use in almost all of your other games. Pressuring the centre, neutralizing your opponent’s initiative, improving your piece coordination, trading the right pieces and exploiting your opponent’s weak points are all typical ‘Scandinavian’ spin-offs that Thomas Willemze teaches you in his trademark lucid style. The Scandinavian for Club Players offers everything you need to know to be fully prepared to meet 1.e4. The various lines are enriched with verbal explanations, diagrams, flash-cards and exercises that make this book even more accessible. Willemze not just uses examples from the games of elite grandmasters. As an experienced trainer he knows that discussing club player’s adventures are particularly instructive for his target group.
In what way is this book special? How can it make someone a better player? These are perfectly legitimate questions and whenever I buy a new chess book, I essentially ask the same ones. The short answer is that this book will give you a comprehensive understanding of the chosen openings. Unlike many other books with a similar profile, it goes beyond pure theory and in addition to giving a great deal of practical advice, it touches on issues such as sample games, typical tactical strikes and, in the last chapter, endgames. On top of all this, a homework section enables you to immerse yourself in a given topic and achieve an in-depth understanding of it in your own time. We follow this structure because as a coach, I know how important it is to receive as much guidance as possible on a new opening. Only this can lead to true mastery. Let me recommend this book to any player who wants to learn more about closed openings, adopt a new approach to chess and build up a thorough and sophisticated repertoire. I have tested these openings with my students with good results, so I believe this book is suitable for anyone with an Elo rating from 1600-2500. This book aims to provide a complete overview of a 1.d4 repertoire against five main openings (King’s Indian Defense, Grünfeld Defense, Slav Defense, Benoni Defense, and Catalan systems after 1.d4 d5), offering analysis of classical games and typical tactical motifs to provide an in-depth understanding of the associated middlegames. A concluding chapter explores typical endgames that are likely to arise from 1.d4. Each chapter includes a thorough discussion of a particular opening, answering questions such as what types of players choose it, which world champions played it, or how games typically proceed afterwards.
In this companion volume to the author’s highly-regarded The Nimzo-Indian Defence, the starting point is 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6. The main focus is on 3.Nf3 b6 while Roiz also covers 3.g3 (Catalan) and miscellaneous options."
Most opening books assume you want to become an expert. Openings for Amateurs starts somewhere else: with the mistakes that players under 1600 actually make, over and over, in the first fifteen moves of a game.
The book is in two parts. Part One — "The Primer" — is structured around 24 common opening errors, each given its own chapter. The titles are deliberately stated as mistakes: "Allowing the king to give up castling without a good reason", "Don't make unnecessary pawn moves if you have not completed your development", "Don't develop the queen too early", "Solid, passive defenses are the waiting rooms for defeat." Each chapter explains not just what the mistake is but why it keeps happening and how to avoid it. Author Pete Tamburro, a longtime chess teacher and columnist, pays particular attention to the situations players find most confusing: what to do against gambits like the Blackmar-Diemer or the Belgrade; how to handle "system" openings like the Colle and the Barry Attack; whether to chase an active bishop; how to use (and when to distrust) opening manuals.
Part Two puts principles into practice. Tamburro presents a selection of playable, learnable openings — chosen for their compatibility with the ideas in Part One rather than their theoretical complexity — and illustrates each with annotated games. The 53 games are chosen to show the opening's strategic logic, not to demonstrate the latest theory.
360 pages. Aimed at club-level and scholastic players looking for a practical foundation rather than memorised lines.
This book is a logical follow up of Semkov’s previous work on the Nimzo-Indian Defence. It covers the Exchange Variation 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Bg5 against the Queen’s Gambit Declined. Practical results of 63% in White’s favour and the endorcement of Carlsen, Gukes, Caruana, Aronian, Sarana and many others of the elite confirm the prominent status of this system.Lately second players tend to deviate from the traditional main lines and resort to 3...a6, 3...h6, 3...Be7, 5...Bb4 and other exotic set-ups, so the author analyses them in separate chapters.
There was a golden era when The King’s Gambit was the favourite opening of every attacking player. In the glory days of Paul Morphy it was considered almost cowardly to play anything else. Legends such as Spassky and Bronstein kept the flame burning in the 20th century, but its popularity faded as players became distrustful of White’s ultra-aggressive approach. Nevertheless there are honourable exceptions whose games prove that this ancient weapon can still draw blood – Short, Nakamura and Zvjaginsev are world-class players who have used the King’s Gambit successfully. In this groundbreaking work, GM John Shaw shows that the ultimate Romantic chess opening remains relevant and dangerous even in the computer era.
“I left chess in 2012. I did not touch it for several years. Then I decided to test my strength in Internet blitz. I started from scratch. The board floated before my eyes, and my knee twitched. Less than two months later, I crossed the grandmaster rating mark. My opponents, among them lots of players with a big name, played chess better than me. Surprisingly though, I knew more. On a small island of chess theory, onto which I lured them, I was better equipped. Much better! About 30% of the games ended in wins around the 20th move. A quarter of the games simply ended in mate. In all games, I opened with the moves 1.b3 and 1…b6.” International Master Ilya Odessky is the world’s leading expert on the 1.b3 and 1…b6 chess opening systems. Despite their apparent calm, these openings can get extremely sharp. Now Odessky presents his findings and achievements of recent years. His baffling traps will help you crush your opponents in the opening, with both White and Black. Odessky admits that some of his lines may objectively be somewhat dubious. But in blitz and rapid games they will lead to spectacular play and many surprising wins. Ilya Odessky will entertain, amuse and surprise you in this highly unusual chess opening book full of ultra-romantic chess.
This book gives Black a full repertoire grounded in answering 1...e6 against everything. The answer against 1.d4 is the Stonewall, while the answer against 1.e4 is the French. The repertoire is geared towards all levels due to its flexibility. While I am known for my extreme attention to detail, I have streamlined the text so that it is not as terse as, say, a 1500-page textbook on neurology.
The set-up is based on sound principles and is easy to learn and understand. The Slow Italian may look innocent, but is actually full of venom. Ideal for the average club player but is also regularly adopted by many strong Grandmasters including the very best, such as world champion Magnus Carlsen and Anish Giri.
Most chess openings have been around for centuries; the first book on the Ruy Lopez was written in 1561. Not so the Jobava System. This is a thoroughly modern opening that has only achieved prominence in the last decade or so. It is named after the Georgian chess visionary Baadur Jobava, a highly imaginative and creative grandmaster. The Jobava System is based around the opening moves 1 d4 d5 2 Nc3 Nf6 3 Bf4. For many years this was considered to be a quiet and unassuming backwater of chess theory. No longer!
Thanks to the efforts of Jobava and others this system has been honed into a fierce attacking weapon. As this opening is so new the correct defensive methods are not well understood. This makes the system extremely dynamic and dangerous.
In this book, Simon Williams (the Ginger GM) delves deep into the Jobava and offers up a complete repertoire based on this exciting new system. The advantages are clear:
– There is very little existing theory
– Black cannot play safely on “auto-pilot”
– It is fresh and it’s fun!
The London System, reached after 1.d4 and 2.Bf4, has grown from a quiet sideline into a main-road opening played at every level up to the World Championship. In Chess Opening Repertoire: The London System, Cyrus Lakdawala presents a complete White repertoire built on the pure 2.Bf4 move order (covering every major Black setup, from the Classical ...d5 and ...e6 structures to the King's Indian, Grünfeld, Benoni and Dutch), with a question-and-answer format that tests the reader's understanding throughout.
What's Covered?
Cyrus Lakdawala is an International Master, a former National Open and American Open Champion, and a six-time State Champion. He has taught chess for over 40 years, coaches top US juniors, and is one of the most prolific chess authors of his generation.
The emphasis of the repertoire is to gain space as quickly as possible and set Black the task of finding quick counterplay or face the risk of being overrun. Lakdawala recommends lines with f2-f3 against the Nimzo-Indian, the Petrosian System against the King’s Indian and the Flick Knife (f4 with Bb5+) against the Benoni. With thorough explanations on pawn structures and piece placement, this book provides insight to both strong masters and less experienced players alike. The format is ideal for the chessplayer keen to improve their game. While reading you are continually challenged to answer probing questions – a method that greatly encourages the learning and practising of vital skills just as much as the traditional assimilation of chess knowledge. Carefully selected questions and answers are designed to keep you actively involved and allow you to monitor your progress as you learn.
The previous book of Khalifman and Soloviov, The Modern Scotch, discussed how to counter 1.e4 e5 in the most direct, aggressive and sometimes even risky fashion. Their new work explores a radically different approach. It presents a White repertoire based on the Four Knights Game, and in particular, the main line – the traditional system with 4.Bb5. The authors summarise the method they propose in the following way: 1. White controls the centre, develops quickly and castles. He DOES NOT strive for a direct clash with the opponent after the first few moves in the opening. 2. He begins active operations only after the completion of his development; as a rule, these will take place in the centre and on the kingside. 3. White strives to reach positions in which basic strategical principles, correct evaluation and ability to choose the correct plan will be at least as important as calculation and theoretical knowledge. 4. He still fights for an opening advantage even though the focus is on the middlegame.
Sielecki always clearly explains the plans and counterplans and keeps you focussed on what the position requires. Ambitious players rated 1500 or higher will get great value out of studying this extremely accessible book.
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