Do the new editions of these books have anything new to add on the Scotch Four Knights and the Vienna?

Trandism
Not at all. Bit of yellow is good. Brightens up the place. Colour scheme here otherwise is very hospital.

kylemeister wrote on 04/13/08 at 22:08:57:


Wasn't tPau a pop combo too? Flame-haired Carol Decker fronting.

China in Your Hand. Splendid pop - an old fave of mine.

Trandism - my, thats a lot of smileys. Do you have a bucketful to get rid of before the end of the day?

yep, I'm tipau on FICS and was on ICC too. Not very imaginative when coming up with new names

Surely not the character from Star Trek; that was T'Pau.  Yeah, I know.

It seems that I'm in the minority (or alone!) but I found the Positional Repertoire (never seen the Attacking one, so I can't comment on it) very useful when I read it years ago (as a 1400-1500 player). I still play the c3 Sicilian and French Tarrasch and only swapped from the Scotch Four Knights to the Lopez two years ago.
Of course over time the lines I played inside those systems differed more and more from those recommended but I still think it was a good intro.

Most 1 e4 repertoire books also commit the error of giving 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 d6 3 d4 Nf6 4 dxe5 Nxe4 5 Qd5!, 3...Nd7 4 dxe5 etc, then recommending meeting the Pirc with 1 e4 d6 2 d4 Nf6 3 Nc3, omitting to mention that Black can try to transpose to a Philidor with ...Nbd7 and ...e5 on the 3rd and 4th moves in that line, avoiding White's dangerous lines based on 4 dxe5.

I've seen John Watson point this out countless times in his book reviews.

naughtyknight wrote on 04/10/08 at 17:52:10:

Basically all these books are a direct carbon copy of "an opening repertoire for the attacking player" from the 80s (by Keene if memory serves). Back then it was quite a new book in its setup, but now these repertoires have nothing to add.
These books all have the same setup:
-A blurb telling that main lines are too much theory and that these lines are both easy and agressive/active/give black problems.
-Against 1..e5 either Scotch gambit or Vienna.
-Against 1..c5 either Grand Prix, closed or c3.
-Against 1..e6 either advance or KIA
-Against 1..c6 either advance or KIA
-Against 1..d6 let's give a dangerous line the Austrian or 150 and blindly copy someone else's analysis.
-Against 1..d5, 1..Nf6 and others just copy an interesting looking line.

If they escape this setup at points then you can bet the analysis is lacking severely.

Even a guy like Emms did this with his "attacking with 1.e4", though to be fair he did a decent job at the analysis.

As a 1.e4 player you can be very jealous at 1.d4 and 1.c4 players who are decently catered for. There is eg Cox' and Palliser's book on 1.d4 and Kosten's and McDonald on 1.c4 lines. 1.e4 players have to do with either cr*p like this, take a sabbatical to study Khalifman's books (they are worth it though) or do the hard work on your own by making use of a lot of "black" books and annotated games.