I just ordered your book through Amazon.com, to be delivered to me on the big island of Hawaii, near Hilo. I'm just an old dude rated class B USCF. I had played the Scandinavian in tournaments in the mid 1990s with good results. Lately I have been playing that or the French against 1.e4. I had wanted to try the Sicilian, but, did not want a very main line system, and the Kalashnikov looks like a system that I might like to play. I enjoyed the Scandinavian, as it is a pretty forcing line for black. This system in your book, if white allows the Kalashnikov, looks pretty forcing too.

    I'll do an Amazon review after I've had time gto get into your book. I had thought about buying the Aagard/Pinski book from 2001, but I like that you get into the anti-Sicilians, and they didn't. I think Aagard is a very good chess writer also,  ut chose your book for the above reason, and the fact that it is very current.

TonyRo wrote on 03/09/15 at 12:24:25:


May you tell us what Modernized gives against the Najdorf and Sveshnikov? I wasn't too impressed with the KID book.

fling wrote on 03/09/15 at 12:35:15:

#Winning

Flashman wrote on 03/09/15 at 14:19:51:

Enjoy! 

I also checked Rossolimo and friends and it seems like your suggestion is not considered.

rotten wrote on 03/01/15 at 08:39:43:

Wow, thank you! 

rotten wrote on 03/01/15 at 08:39:43:

And thanks again!

I hope you continue to enjoy it, cheers! 

MNb wrote on 02/22/15 at 23:51:26:

Thank you sir! 

MNb wrote on 02/22/15 at 23:51:26:

It was a lot of work for me too! 

But depending on whether or not you plan to use the repertoire for OTB or correspondence play, the workload will be greatly diminished. I find that very few of my OTB games go particularly far into the book and a ton of them end up in Chapters 2 or 10, but now that it's out, I expect a greater number of my correspondence games to go much deeper. In fact, one has already, all the way up to 16.c3 a5 17.Qa4 Bd7 18.Rfd1 Qd8 19.Rd2 g6 20.Rc1 Kg7 of Chapter 1. Not sure if my opponent found the idea by himself or he grabbed a copy of the book quickly after it came out, though it doesn't much matter.

I debated for a long time about the order of the chapters actually. One of the most influential chess books of my career, Dearing's Dragon book, ordered them exactly the opposite - with increasing level of sophistication by White. I can't quite put my finger on why 8.Nc4! had to be Chapter 1, but I like the ordering as it is - it would be weird to me for Chapter 2 to be Chapter 1. Doesn't smell right.

MNb wrote on 02/22/15 at 23:51:26:

It's certainly a principled line, though I haven't found anything concretely better for White. If you have I'd love to see it and a take a look myself. Black is very solid, and has very Kalashnikov-esque kind of play, if that makes sense. Harvey Williamson has been playing a few Kalashnikovs and Anti-Kalashnikov over here while competing in the WBCCC 2015 Side Event, and his games have been going swimmingly so far. By chances there's a game that features 12.a4:



16.g4!? was certainly creative, but one could argue that might have been played if White couldn't find more conventional routes to an advantage. Who knows!

Is the comment about winning chances with respect to correspondence? It's tough to find openings that give winning chances for Black in that domain. There are only a few real openings that can confuse computers enough to allow Black to create real chances reliably there, at least in my opinion. The Winawer is one of them, the KID is another (and only in a few lines), perhaps some of the more closed variations of the Ruy Lopez (I have been thinking about supplementing my Kalashnikovs and Sveshnikos with this line for that reason). Anyway, I would not fault you for sticking to the Winawer in that case. I know that playing 1...e6 probably meshes better with your Dutch repertoire as well. I'd like to hear you thoughts on Black repertoires in CC anyway, but perhaps that's a discussion best left for a separate thread.

MNb wrote on 02/22/15 at 23:51:26:

This is a weird screw-up actually, and one that I don't think has anything to do with me being American. In the database that I'm currently using as a reference, I would have not made that mistake. The game is correctly listed, and the surname and first names are very easy to distinguish and list correctly. I have (and Palliser as well, my editor) found a few weird game references, similar to these. I wonder if it's due to the fact that my old database had some screwups (it was Opening Master, and I wouldn't put that past them). It's also possible that it was late at night, I was in a hurry, or I was just being particularly thick that day. All of those things are certainly possible as well.

I can always count on you and Stefan to keep me on my toes with regards to chess history and naming.   

I hope you continue to enjoy the book as you delve deeper. 

Hi HighPockets,

It wasn't a conscious decision, more of a miss. I hit some variations on the same structure with the Ng1 on e2, the Nb1 on c3, and with the pawn on f4 in the GPA, 3.Nc3, and 2.Ne2 coverage, but not the true KIA with Nf3 and the delayed development of the queen's knight. With that said, I'll tie up that loose end in an update.

I'll surely suggest a line that I've had success with, and one that is consistent with our approach to a lot of other less testing tries, that being the kingside fianchetto combined with ...e5 and ...Nge7. Black even has the option of playing ...d5 in one go. For what it's worth, White scores terribly after 5...e5 & 6...Nge7 in my database. I'll post a bit of analysis and some illustrative games to get you and your friend started tomorrow, for right now it's quite late in Cleveland!

Thanks to you and your friend for the compliments and support. I hope you're enjoying the book!

ArKheiN wrote on 02/18/15 at 22:19:43:

Great, can't wait to hear what you think! Thanks for the support! 

ArKheiN wrote on 02/18/15 at 22:19:43:

I did in fact. It might not be in the bibliography as such, because it was eventually released (with a few very small updates iirc) under the name The Complete Kalashnikov. The book itself is solid - I think they miss some details in some important lines (as one example, I don't recall them covering 16.c3!? from my Chapter 1, which I consider to be critical) and it suffers from ridiculously bad formatting and typesetting (it's hard to navigate), but overall I like it. One thing it has going for it is that it covers both 7...Be7 and the older 7...b5, which I didn't have space to do, and perhaps there's a little bit more analysis overall, just because of space considerations. Well worth checking out, and I said so in my book as well.