cma6 wrote on 07/03/07 at 01:43:54:
I would appreciate it if someone who has the Gallagher book could
give an outline of the lines he covers, i.e., does he cover any 9 Nd2 material not covered in Golubev or Nunn's "New KID"?
I have Gallagher's Play the King's Indian. It's a great book, but its a repertoire book for Black. If you're looking for more balanced coverage, you might be happier with Gallagher's earlier Starting Out Guide, which is meant to be more objective, albeit more basic.
Nevertheless, even though Play the King's Indian is a Black repertoire book, I still think that White can learn something. For example, I found Gallagher's explanation of each side's plans in the Nd2 variation to be very helpful. Basically, he feels that White's Q-side attack is too quick to be ignored and cites Beliavsky-Solak, St Vincent 2000 as an example of what can befall Black if he's not careful.
Gallagher thinks Black has to take some sort of preventative action on the Q-side, but he doesn't like 9..c5, which gives White a target on the Q-side and a chance to develop an initiative with Rb1 annd b4. The repertoire is therefore based on 9..a5.
After 9..a5, he gives 10.a3 Nd7 (he doesn't cover 10..Bd7 and refers the interested reader to the Starting Out book for coverage) 11.Rb1 f5 12.b4 Kh8 (he explains why this has become the main move, displacing 12..f4 and 12..Nf6) and now he covers 13.Qc2 through the game Lputian-Dolmatov, Rostov 1993 and 13.f3 through Ljubojevic-Kasparov, Linares 1993.
I don't have the Starting Out book, so I can't compare, but even for the player of the White pieces, Play the King's Indian is well worth getting. LeeRoth