Opening Books

Danish grandmaster Lars Schandorff is known for clear explanations and practical, fighting recommendations, and this volume delivers both. It presents a complete white repertoire against Black's Queen's Gambit responses — the positions arising after 1.d4 d5 2.c4 — covering the Slav, the Semi-Slav, the Queen's Gambit Accepted, and various other systems.

Schandorff's approach throughout the GM Repertoire series has been to choose lines that create real problems for Black rather than opting for technical, drawish variations. This volume continues that philosophy: the repertoire here is designed to produce middlegames with genuine winning chances for White, even at the cost of some theoretical complexity.

At 320 pages this is a focused treatment of one branch of 1.d4 play. Volume 2 (The Indian Defences) completes the repertoire by handling the Nimzo-Indian, King's Indian, Grünfeld, and other systems Black can choose by delaying ...d5. The two books together give White a complete, tested approach to 1.d4 written by a grandmaster who plays these lines himself.

Players who meet 1.d4 with ...d5 or ...Nf6 spend most of their preparation on the main lines — and then, in practice, keep running into everything else: the London, the Torre, the Colle and Colle-Zukertort, the Tromp­owsky, the Veresov, the Barry Attack, the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit and a host of other sidelines designed to dodge theory. This book, part of Quality Chess’s Grandmaster Repertoire series, provides a complete, active answer to all of them.

The material is organised by Black’s move order so it slots neatly alongside an existing main-line repertoire. The four parts cover the sidelines arising after 1.d4 d5, after 1.d4 Nf6 (including a thorough treatment of the Trompowsky), after 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6, and after 2.Nf3 g6 — the latter handling the London, Torre, Barry, and fianchetto tries against a King’s-Indian/Grünfeld set-up.

The recommendations are ambitious rather than merely safe: the goal throughout is to give Black a sound position with real winning chances, not just equality, against opponents hoping to avoid a theoretical fight.

A genuinely useful book to own, because these systems appear constantly at club and tournament level. Aimed at intermediate and advanced players.

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.

While good opening preparation is important, it is often the proper middle and endgame execution that dictates the game outcome. In Techniques of Positional Play, authors Valeri Bronznik and Anatoli Terekhin focus on 45 key practical methods that every aspiring player must know. From concepts like restricting enemy pieces, creating space, navigating pawn structures, leveraging rook pawns, seizing open files, and more, these skills, while often intuitively understood, can be honed through deliberate study to enhance strategic vision. 

Most of these techniques are easy to understand and memorize. Bronznik and Terekhin do not burden the reader with deep analysis and only present those variations that are necessary to get the point. Additionally, the book includes a special training section where the players can test and reinforce their skills and positional understanding.

This book consists of eleven chapters devoted to different variations of the all-purpose defence for Black 1.d4 d6.

This hefty book offers the results of S. Soloviov’s ten-year-long investigation of a nearly virgin territory of chess theory.

The French Defence is one of the most popular and reliable responses to 1.e4. Grandmaster Repertoire 15 – The French Defence 2 covers the most critical variation of the Winawer, which occurs after the opening moves 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c5 5.a3 Bxc3† 6.bxc3 Ne7 7.Qg4. This volume presents three contrasting ways of meeting White’s aggressive opening system: 7...cxd4 leading to the notorious Winawer Poisoned Pawn; 7...0–0 8.Bd3 f5, a solid yet strategically complex system; and 7...0–0 8.Bd3 Nbc6, which leads to a tense, full-blooded battle

Grandmaster Repertoire 14 – The French Defence 1 introduces the Winawer Variation after the opening moves 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4, and provides expert recommendations against all of White’s major possibilities, with the exception of the most critical 7.Qg4 line which receives special coverage in Volume Two of the series. Volume Three will deal with the Tarrasch, Advance and all of White’s other options.

Practical White Repertoire, Volume 2

This is the second volume of Alexei Kornev’s practical White repertoire with 1.d4 and 2.c4, and it is devoted to the defences in which Black fianchettoes the dark-squared bishop — the most ambitious, attacking replies to the Queen’s-Pawn game.

Kornev gives clear, complete recommendations against the whole fianchetto family: the Grünfeld (with the main 4.cxd5 and 5.e4 approach), the King’s Indian in all its branches, and the Modern, Pirc, and Philidor/Lion structures that arise when Black combines ...g6 or ...d6 with an early kingside fianchetto. Each is met with a coherent, unified plan rather than a patchwork of unrelated lines.

As the title promises, the emphasis is practical: the repertoire is chosen to be sound and genuinely playable for a club player, with the key plans and move-orders laid out clearly so you know not just the moves but the ideas behind them.

This is the middle book of a three-volume series: together with Volume 1 (the 1...d5 defences) and Volume 3 (the Nimzo-Indian and others), it forms a complete, classical 1.d4 and 2.c4 repertoire. Best suited to club players and above who want a principled, low-fuss way to meet the King’s Indian and Grünfeld.

We have analysed the most straightforward possibilities for White

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.