Blackburne wrote on 01/09/10 at 04:22:50:

As with the other Chess Stars books, each section is divided into "Quick Repertoire" (a basic overview), "Step by Step" (the main analysis) and "Illustrative Games" (50 in the book as a whole, lightly annotated). The analysis section is structured as variation trees, but there is quite a lot of explanation; I find the balance between analysis and explanation about right for my level (2000ish).

I do have a niggle with the book, although I suspect it matters rather more to me than to most people.  In the chapter headings, the introductory moves are uniformly given as 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 etc.  Very irritating albeit, of course, ultimately irrelevant to the material presented.

I haven't seen any reviews but I have just received a copy as a late Christmas present from a well-informed colleague (I work in London for a company based in Edinburgh, so the Scotch has a particular significance, given the history of its nomenclature).

To be honest, I had never been attracted to the Scotch with White but this is an appetizing titbit of a book - I was surprised by how slender it is, actually, but it does seem to cover most of the ground by adopting a fairly strict repertoire approach.

The principal exception is after 4...Nf6 5.Nxc6 bxc6 where the main lines after 6.e5 Qe7 7.Qe2 is covered (7...Nd5 8.c4 Nb6 9.Nc3 and 8...Ba6 9.b3) but Barsky also offers up 6.Bd3 d5 7.e5!? which I for one had always considered dubious.  Barsky makes what looks at first glance (albeit no serious analysis) a decent case that it can be played as a slightly speculative pawn sac.

The philosophy of the repertoire is basically, 'look, the Spanish is probably better, but let's be honest, there are so many lines where you have to learn so much theory just to prove a minuscule advantage, is it really worth the candle?' (very much the same reason Kaufman proposed the Exchange Spanish in Chess Advantage in Black and White, but with the added benefit of avoiding the Berlin etc.).  For the same reason, this repertoire generally proposes White playing Nxc6 early on so that the positions have a similar feel to them.

Most obviously, this means that 4...Bc5 is met by an immediate 5.Nxc6 with the follow-up 5...Qf6 6.Qf3, just as McDonald proposed in his massively under-rated (imho) Starting Out:1.e4.

The book follows the now-familiar Chess Stars recipe of giving a 'Quick Repertoire' followed by a 'Step-by-Step' examination, and finally a few 'Complete Games' for each major line.

All in all, and again in the absence of any detailed consideration of the lines, it looks like a very useful primer for anybody thinking of taking up the Scotch.  As an occasional 1.e4 player myself, it's perfect.

Some years ago I did some work on the Neo-Mieses variation with Bd3, teaching it to a student who went on to be very successful with it against titled players. So I will be very interested to see what Barskij has to say there.

Nestor, can you give us some sense of the style of the book? Is it dense thickets of variations like an old Batsford monograph, or annotated games, or ...? I'm particularly interested to know whether there's a good balance of analysis and conceptual explanation. If there is (by which I mean, enough conceptual explanation where that's appropriate), I might get the book for a student of mine.

I ordered a copy of this book yesterday, but I'm in the states. I'll let everyone know what I think of it soon.

I've had an e-mail from NIC that they've got it in stock - so mainland Europe might get it in time for Christmas?!

TonyRo wrote on 12/09/09 at 13:46:30:


Funny enough, the book is not even listed on Chess Stars website. I wonder what else they are covertly working on.

I can't find any games by Vladimir Barsky in chessbase or on chessgames. Does he go by a different name?