Fllg wrote on 11/27/17 at 16:07:22:


Writing a book takes a long time. And at that time, I was not familiar with the book "Playing 1.e4 vol. 1".

To prove the superiority of white Shaw leads weak moves for Black. For example,

I have the 1..c6 book by Lakdawala. The mainline Exchange variation given is 1 e4 c6 2 d4 d5 3 exd5 cxd5 4 Bd3 Nc6 5 c3 Qc7, with the Bf4 line as a sideline. The main gain features the mainline. However, I have a few problems with this book. I like Lakdawala when he talks about chess as he makes some very good points, but the problem is you have to go through all of his waffle to get to the chess. For me, the waffle becomes VERY tedious and starts to put me off.

Another problem is that there are gaps everywhere in the book. For example, Negi's suggestion in the mainline Caro Kann I don't think is covered. In the English solution, one of the best scoring lines for white (and a mainline) is not covered too. There is another line in the Slav mentioned by Simon Williams in his white repertoire 1 d4 dvds that is also not covered (involving Nd2/Ne4/Nd6 ideas). I think there are others but you get the picture.

If you were looking for a book on the Caro Kann then Chess Stars have just released a book on the Caro Kann by Kornev. I would imagine this would be a good place to start. I know that the Everyman books are not supposed to be encyclopediac and are more of an introduction but some of the things mentioned above put me off a little.

The main line in the book goes 4. Bd3 and I have no idea why the index only gives 4. Bf4.
The coverage of the whole exchange variation is only pages 186-191 (which equals one annotated game), so I wouldn't call it a chapter. The author mentions his former "The Caro-Kann: Move by Move" and indeed there is considerably deeper coverage.
This ...c6-book really doesn't give an up to date repertoire. I consider it a collection of games which show you how to handle the ...c6 middlegames.