kylemeister wrote on 07/18/08 at 18:25:52:
DionTheGreek wrote on 07/18/08 at 15:12:42:
I was not aware of that publication and have no idea who is that new author. Every chess player need to study the classics and respect the history of the game before refer to the latest "bubble" theory. Unless you are over 2500- latest theory doesn't matter. So, even a book 5, 10, or 50 year old still good if you know how to choose them (I agree about the Soltis Book).
I'll not mind to buy that book for my collection in the future.
Personally I prefer studying games of Yusupov and Polgar and rely theory on the books I recommended before.
Note: That system itself is not 1-all solution for all white problems.
I agree with the thrust of your comments, but you're pushing it a bit far (e.g. with the "unless you're over 2500" bit).
As Silman and others have pointed out, some of those older books really have some missing components...it is not an issue of just not seeing innovation in theory...it's an issue of just not dealing with very important things...or dealing with them well.
[there's also the problem that most of those books were authored by people who do not actually play the opening, and it shows. Silman pointed this out about Lane's book, but the same could be said of Smith&Hall and Schiller's book]
For example, most books give almost no coverage of 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 d5 3.e3 Bf4. Smith and Hall is the only one to cover the fast Bb4+ variation, and they give bad analysis (thinking it is bad for Black, but yet GMs still use it with success against white!) [the line I'm referring to here is 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 d5 3.e3 e6 4.Bd3 c5 5.b3 cxd4 6.exd4 Bb4+]
The Polgar DVD has nothing on any of the early bishop deviations [as far as I know]:
1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Bf5
1.d4 d4 2.Nf3 Bg4
1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 d5 3.e3 Bg4
1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 d5 3.e3 Bf5
[These lines happen in practice more than the "Main Line," and most books just give very little coverage of them.]
None of the books give a good antidote to the "Sneaky Gruenfeld"
1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.e3 g6!
Smith and Hall [WHICH REPRESENTED A HUGE STEP FORWARD for the Colle] has a tendency to over-laud positions where it is hard to see that White actually has any advantage. Their solution to the KID is particularly dubious.
Secondly, the issue with just looking at Yusupov's games is that his games are going to look a lot different from yours...not just because he is a much stronger player than either one of us, but also because he is playing a different kind of repertoire where he almost always just uses the C-Z as a response to an early ...e6. And then when he does use the C-Z, it is often a transpositional device to a late Queen's Gambit.
Club and tournament players are much more likely to find a far wider variety of positions to deal with...and repertoire players are much more likely to have to deal with whole subtrees that Yusupov would never find himself in due to his repertoire.
Further, even those strong players who play the C-Z against a broader demographic [say Vlatko Kovacevic] will not end up in the same positions at the same frequency as tournament players because their high-level opponents will typically use their own idiosyncratic defenses rather than the "main line" [which is almost never used at high levels except by tranposition...and then by people who stumbled onto it accidentally rather than by players who actually have studied those positions beforehand....therefore you are seeing the moves chosen by strong players seeing the position for the first time]
Palliser's book on the OTHER Colle, does do a good job of addressing some of these concerns...but then again it highlights the "wrong" Colle (The c3-Colle instead of the b3-Colle). I only play the Zukertort, but even I found Palliser's book a good one.