This book was a bit tricky to get in Sweden since the Swedish primary chess shop does not apper to have it. I got my copy from a not only chess book shop  a few weeks ago, I have not had the time to read it yet.

happy new year!!!

did someone check this book?

i have it and look some lines. anyhow i miss deep analyzes

Obviously because it is not out yet!

Greetings,

fluffy wrote on 11/30/11 at 14:34:57:

Thank you, Mr. Vigorito.

Excellent - with a "proper" page-count, it'll be a Dragon book well-worth buying!

Kindest regards,

James

192 is the standard page count before Everyman realease. Therefore if Everyman homepage gives another page count usually that is the more updated one.

Dragan Glas wrote on 11/28/11 at 18:29:49:

Amazon.com says 320, and the index of the book (from the downloadable pages on the Everyman site) goes up to page 318, so 320 sounds right.

Markovich wrote on 11/27/11 at 18:06:32:

I don't play at all now. I haven't played real chess for over 20 years (except for some blitz on the net recently). The time I was talking about was the time when chessbase had just gotten started, NIC was still fairly new and chess programs were a joke. So 'normal' people just waited for the next chess informant to be up-to-date (meaning less than a year behind). Not knowing that the evaluation of a critical line changed from unclear to +-  or -+ (which did happen from time to time in the Polugaevsky variation) while your opponent did finished games rather quickly. Nowadays of course you can ask Houdini and friends to avoid the worst surprises.

tp2205 wrote on 11/27/11 at 16:42:49:

I don't understand the last sentence. Maybe theres a negation too many in it.

I can add anecdotal evidence too the same observation though. I've been playing the Semi-Slav for ca. 20-25 years now. Of course I'm no longer as active as I used to be, but still I got ca. 5 tournament games per year with it.
When did I get the last Meran? In the early 90s.
When did I get the last Botvinnik? 2 years ago and maybe every 2 years on average, but ...
when the last time a main line of the Botvinnik? In the early 90s.
What do my opponents play instead?
1.) QGD Exchange. Against Semi-Slav moveorder that's immediate equality.
2.) Anti-Meran with Qc2. Mostly all kinds of calm variations with b3 and e4. That's simply equal unless Karpov is white.
3.) Anti-Meran Shirov/Shabalov. Okay, this used to be dangerous, so I'll count it as a serious try for an advantage.
4.) Nowadays very popular: Early Qc2 lines, in the hope to avoid Meran & Noteboom and get into a closed Catalan if possible. Annoying stuff, but most players under 2200 don't know how to handle this as white, which renders it pretty harmless in their hands.
5.) All kinds of early deviations in the Botvinnik. Not critical.

Things were even worse in the RL Marshall. The only problem with it at amateur level is that you never get it. 99% of the white players are simply afraid of it.

My observation is that players up to 2000 level, with the exception of junior players on the way up, will generally be happy to somehow get a playable position and make it out of the opening alive if facing a very aggressive opening. They'll virtually never go down the critical path.
Which leads to positive qualities for the Dragon and Acc. Dragon: Everything except the Yugoslav and the main lines of the Acc. Dragon is quite harmless from a theoretical perspective. An experienced black player can play confidently for a win, knowing he is already equal.