Markovich wrote on 04/04/11 at 19:34:05:


Not at all. TT has an idiosyncratic style but I don't see there's anything wrong with that. He writes books that are meant to be read. That's the point. He's not writing an opening encyclopaedia in which variations are neatly mapped out for easy reference, from which moves can just be memorized. He's writing a book about the opening.

Thanks! But...do you have Jansa's book in your computer?   

Having visited Glasgow and the Quality Chess head quarters last week, this enabled me to see from my own the amount of work the editors put in their books (and this is not the only thing i saw. I also glanced at some Avrukh's chapters for his new book! It will be absolutely fantastic, i guarantee!), so i can only agree with Mark. The writter can write everything he wants. It is the editors responsibility to make the final product how it really should be. Of course this is because the editor has signed a contract with the author for a specific subject, so he editor can ask the author to fullfill his demands.

Generally i am not so negative on reading other interesting stuff, annotated endings, or stories about lines that are not played anymore if the analysis is correct on the opening i am interested in. Once again, i would compare Taylor's analysis with Kritz's analysis (from a recent CBM) and with Jansa's analysis (from his book Dynamics of Chess Strategy) and then form an opinion about Taylor's work. Does these sources mentioned at the Bibliography? I would surprized if they are. Can anyone please compare the analysis? I want to buy the book, but i really don't want to give so much money only to discover later that Taylor hasn't done his job with the important sources.

I recently acquired this book. There are a couple of things which i find very inconvenient but i think the analysis is rather top notch.

As usual, Taylor's recommendations are very dynamic and rather good. They certainly improve on whatever was written before, especially Khalifman's work. The good thing as well, is that he offers two solid main lines as well as two sharp gambits, basically appealing to everyone. The other good thing is, if you're more of a universal player (kinda what i like to think about myself) then you can use both and annoying people who are preparing against you.

HOWEVER, there are annoying things in the book which i alluded to earlier. Taylor doesn't have seemed to have learned from his previous books (at least the one on the alekhine that i have) in that he provides much useless information and sometime things that just do not need to be there. Let me give you a few examples:

There is one section in the Siesta line, where he gives about 2 pages of 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d5. He gives us a long story about Tal, then goes on to say that the gambit is bad (he also calls it something weird as well, i thought it was just the Elephant gambit). What is the point of having this? i dont know.

There are also instances where its just damn confusing. So, in the Actual first chapter on the theory of the ...Nge7 solid line, the first two games are with the wrong move order. Now, Taylor goes on to point out that this is deliberately the wrong move and should not be adopted which is fine, but it has me wondering why approximately 4 pages were spent on it. A (at least in my view) better approach would have been to simply tell us the wrong move order, in a game (or two) which has the right move order.

Here's my biggest problem. For some reason, he forgets that this is an opening book quite a lot of the time. He gives entire games annotated; yes i even mean the endings fully annotated. I don't particularly see the point of doing this. The chance that you'll follow a game that long (if you can even remember that far) and that someone will improve on move 53 is extremely low, its probably never even happened ever. It's obvious that he's very passionate about these particular games that he annotates but perhaps in a seperate book written on the endgame. This goes into another problem of giving entire game scores. I'm not sure if he realises that everyone has chessbase these days, and that they can look up the rest of the game in the database.

The entire first section (which is about 40 pages long) is given on how world champions played this opening. Almost all of them have no theoretical significance, and a lot of them start off with a different move order so different positions are reached to the lines that he recommends. Again i don't see the point of this entire chapter; perhaps some useful themes can be grasped from a deep study of these games but like i said the positions are unique due to the different move orders. My suggestion would be (instead of this entire chapter), have puzzles both tactical and positional which reinforce the themes. I think this will work a lot better than asking 1600-2300 players go through about 10 games which they will probably just breeze through, not understanding some things along the way (thats what i did).

So all in all, i think the book is a solid 8.5/10. The analysis is very good as always with Taylor but i cannot get over the strange and sometimes downright confusing format that he presents his material in. There's little structure (he doesn't really miss much (i've only seen 2 small things since ive been studying it for about two week), it's just all muddled up between the games. The e-book format is also released so that would make it easier to just delete things that are unecessary (which is quite a lot of deleting).

BUT PLEASE IM TIMOTHY TAYLOR IF YOU HAPPEN TO BE READING THIS! CUT DOWN ON THE UNECESSARY MATERIAL! The good thing is though, he evidently loves his chess very much, which im guessing has enabled him to produce some high class analysis.

In 1974, RHM put out a book How to Open a Chess Game with articles by big time GMs, including Keres, Larsen, and Petrosian.  Lajos Portisch recommended the modern Steinitz as a relatively simple practical choice for amateurs.

grrrrr. I chose cuts down on a load of theory. But i wanted to choose 3 answers in one!
Recommended because its active and cuts down on a load of theory!

NeverGiveUp wrote on 03/03/11 at 14:34:24:


I think it's out next week, but don't quote me on that

MNb wrote on 02/28/11 at 10:26:12:


Of course you will. Countless rubbishy books are based on the evaluations, explanations and analyses authors have culled from the databases. To his credit, Taylor's books aren't like that.