Anonymous3 wrote on 11/24/13 at 22:02:23:


I've grown to expect good sense and clear explanations from Nigel Davies's books, rather than  encyclopedic coverage. Nobody's perfect, and as we used to say, "even Homer nods".

As has been noted here many times before, the 'complete annotated games' approach (as opposed to the 'variation tree' format) is very prone to such gaps in coverage.

I suppose that in mitigation one can plead that at the time of publication (2005) Qe2 lines had been pretty much confined to being a minority interest among the GMs ever since the 1950s and it was only the following year (2006) that Greet's book began to stimulate some interest in them again.

But it's definitely an important omission, since 12 d5 is Greet's recommendation, has scored very well (64% from 252 games in Megabase 2013) and has been played at least six times by the main current GM supporter of Qe2 lines in the Spanish, Sergei Tiviakov.

However, I think we can definitely let Davies off the hook for not foreseeing that such an unlikely-looking move as 6 Qf3 in the Scotch would ever warrant serious coverage. Although it was played by Max Lange as early as 1862 (!) it really only began to take off as a serious try for advantage from 2006 onwards.

Does no one else find this omission strange?

An even more striking line is missing from the mainline Scotch
and now Davies doesn't consider what might well even be the best move, 6.Qf3.

I think it's unreasonable to expect a watertight e4 e5 repertoire from one volume, but Davies does get you well on your way and his verbal guidance is very useful, imo.

Uhh, I thought Davies recommended 11...Nd7 in his book.