You're all going to think I'm nuts for suggesting this one, but it's an opening line that was played by both Morphy and Kasparov at their peaks, and I've never heard of a book that covers just this particular line: The Exchange French.

Yes, there are dozens of books on the French, and they all have a chapter on the Exchange in there somewhere. But it's usually treated as an afterthought: "... and if some patzer actually bothers to play the 'Let's Draw' variation of the French, just play like this."

The problem with the Exchange is that there are so many possible reasonable moves that the black French player can't just pick one method of dealing with it and hope to get by. You really need to learn a lot of different setups to deal with all the different possible move orders.

Yes, it's extremely drawish at grandmaster level, but people who buy books on these things aren't grandmasters. After losing two blitz games recently on the black side of this, I went and reread the chapter on it in McDonald's "How to Play Against 1. e4", and realized that his recommendations wouldn't have worked in either of my games, because my opponents with white played differently than anything he mentioned. What they played was probably weaker than the GM level plans he tried to prepare readers against, but they were still the types of reasonable, if not necessarily strongest, moves that club level players actually play.

And that's why I think a book about this would be useful. I'm around 1700ish USCF (give or take 100 either way, depending on my latest slump/winning streak), and this variation still gives me more trouble than any other when I play the French as black. And I know I've heard of several people who have said they've given up the French altogether just to avoid the Exchange.

RdC wrote on 02/13/13 at 11:16:23:


I suggest "The King's Indian Wall", written by an author with experience writing books with the word Wall in the title.

I'd buy it!

I dunno. Play the KID like Bronstein? (Or a bunch of high cachet names from that era.).

The marketing folk have achieved much harder (That the lines work out less interestingly maybe an issue )

Actually doesn't that book about that famous old candidates event almost count as a book on the opening? iirc Quite a few examples in there.

There isn't a book devoted to the KID with Nbd7 (mostly seems to cover Nc6 or Na6). I use it vs Classical mainline and Fianchetto. It's an old school mainline, but  there are some GMs still playing that way.

Covered a bit in Dangerous Weapons KID, but I've had to piece together my own repetoire from Megabase.

I think the Schlechter Variation of the Slav Defense has been neglected with an unwarranted brushoff of "drawish". I think someone needs to take a serioius look to find out what kept Schlecter's interest in this variation. I think this rivals your Vienna Variation of the QG.

Beating the Flank Openings by Kotronias is an old but still very good source on the reversed Dragon and White´s early deviations. It offers a complete repertoire for Black.

I'm surprised that no recent book (less than 15 years) has been published on the Reverse Dragon in the English, that is 1. c4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.g3 d5 4.cxd5 Nxd5 5.Bg2 Nb6. In my opinion, it's one of the best way to meet the English without allowing transpositions to another opening.

The only book I know which covers this variation in depth is Marin's book from Quality Chess, but it's a white repertoire. I would be intersted in a complete coverage of the Reverse Dragon, or even better for me, I'd like a repertoire book for Black starting after 1.c4 e5 with the Reverse Dragon.

I saw the Chess Base training course "Meet the English Opening" in 60 minutes, from Dejan Bojkov. It's an interesting short introduction on the topic. Enough to confirm that it's what I'd like to play with Black against the English, but really not enough to play it with confidence. 

Let's hope chess publishers will read this and please some of the request in this topic.