MNb wrote on 02/22/15 at 23:51:26:
Excellent book.
Thank you sir!
MNb wrote on 02/22/15 at 23:51:26:
I superficially read through it yesterday evening (still took me more than two hours) and I have noted that it will require a lot of work by me. And that's the way I like it. I also like it that you put the difficult stuff immediately at the forefront in chapter 1.
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:
As a result I for the time being have doubts on 7...Be7 and especially 12.a4 on page 38. It doesn't seem like this will give me more winning chances than ...Kf8 lines in the French Winawer (I have a perfect score with it - five games, five draws).
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:
Of course as a Dutchman I already have minor complaints. On page 33 Hans is not the surname - the game was P.Cijs-H.P. Lüddeckens.
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.