Christiansen, Watson, and Silman did good work on the PCN. Calculating their equivalent hourly pay it must have been quite low. I'm not sure but think Watson was editor in 1983. Gligoric did a "Game of the Month" on the Old Indian, but the bulk of the Old Indian coverage was in annotated games (I seem to recall Tarjan doing some at this time), and Watson-style "Candidates Opening Surveys".

Welling / Giddins have Mahesh Chandra Banerjee in their bibliography.

In my opinion, there are three tough lines in the Old Indian. In all of them white can play patiently to make the space advantage count.

1. Classical with 8.Be3
2. Pseudo-Saemisch with O-O-O
3. King's Fianchetto with normal Anti-KID moves

8.Be3
There's a good reason this is the main line, and it's the one that made me give up the Old Indian. The answer given so casually by Soltis just loses for black, which I found out when I tried it over the board. Later I could never find anything equalizing against it. I still play 1...d6, but after Ng1-f3 prefer to transpose to the KID. Welling / Giddins give five different moves for black:

• 8...a6 on pages 59/224
• 8...Re8 on pages 61/224
• 8...Qe8!? on pages 79/231
• 8...Ng4 (then 9.Be2 Qe8!?) on pages 79/231
• 8...b6 on page 61.

It's probably a good idea to have five (or more!) options, so black doesn't have to suffer the exact same way in every game. On the subject of over-optimistic evaluations, in the Chapter 6 - Tables of the main variations, at the end of the first two lines they give no evaluation. Hmm. At the end of 8...Qe8!? they give the symbol for "counterplay". But if you look at the analysis of 8...Qe8!?, Khalifman is showing +=. They quote Khalifman but offer no improvement, so I think it should have been += rather than "counterplay". At least 8...Ng4 9.Bd2 Qe8!? correctly ends in +=.

Pseudo-Saemisch
This is covered, but instead of being in the Old Indian chapter, it's in the Philidor chapter via 1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.f3 e5 4.d5. The only mention in the Old Indian chapter is in Move Orders when they say 1.d4 d6 2.c4 e5 3.d5 "is not an independent continuation", giving 3...Be7 (or 3...Nd7 or 3...Nf6). And that's it! Well, they could at least have mentioned 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 d6 3.Nc3 e5 (they do give this move order even though they recommend 1...d6) and now 4.d5, as fluffy used to play against me in blitz.

Another oddity is the line 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 d6 3.Nc3 Nbd7 4.e4 e5 5.d5 Nc5 6.f3 a5 7.Be3 Be7 8.Qd2 O-O 9.Nge2 Ne8 10.g4 c6!? with "counterplay". Firstly, this line only appears in Chapter 6 - Tables of the main variations?! Secondly, this treatment with ...Nc5 and ...a5, which reminds me of Junior Tay's treatment, is completely different from their recommendations in the Philidor 3.f3. There they either leave the knight on b8 and try for ...b7-b5, or go 1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.f3 e5 4.d5 Be7 5.Be3 Nbd7 6.c4 O-O 7.Nc3 c6 and then take some suggestions from Barsky.

Looking at Tay, it seemed to me that white is just better in this system. Against the Pirc I would switch from 3.Nc3 to 3.f3 in a heartbeat, except the Saemisch KID is too much work. I avoid the Saemisch KID with both colors because I don't understand it. Or is that the other way around?

King's Fianchetto
Black needs to be careful not to get squashed here. This was played in the 1983 Candidates and was heavily analyzed in The Players' Chess News. If black tries for counterplay with ...c7-c6 ...a7-a6 and ...b7-b5 there are some theoretical problems after a well-timed c4-c5! Welling / Giddins cover this move in different positions, but I don't remember it being as easy for black as they imply. Black has a completely different approach with ...e5xd4, but the e7-bishop is not so active in this Boleslavsky wall structure. If white knows how to play this structure from the KID, and has prepared c4-c5 in the Old Indian, black faces a long uphill struggle to equalize.

Pawnpusher wrote on 09/13/19 at 10:36:58:



Where did Avrukh say he still uses Stockfish 8? When I was at his house he was using stockfish 10 when he looked at things.

I am going to take a leap here, how many times does an author say engines say white is 1.0 and Stockfish or Leela say 0.0. I wonder what engines these authors are using, especially after Avrukh said he still used Stockfish 8? I realize this is a tad off topic, I blame JFugre he opened the door, and I charged in.

Having skimmed the book cover-to-cover, these are the interesting points to me:

Between the "Strategy and Ideas", "Move Orders", and "Illustrative Games" sections in each chapter, there is a lot of repetition. It's obviously intentional, so I'm not criticizing it. But there is some stuff in the "Illustrative Games" that is not repeated in the other sections. I'm not sure if the reverse is true. So I need to go through the whole book with the computer to see the complete picture.

The player index gives both complete games and game fragments. This underscores the amount of repetition in the book. Welling has 13 entries in the index, but after removing duplicates there are only five unique games referenced. The other eight are repetitions of the same five games.

Giddins does not have any entries in the index. This leads me to wonder how the work was divided between the two authors. It is not obligatory for them to say, but I find it nice when authors do explain, e.g. as was done in Aagaard / Pinski (1999) Sicilian Kalashnikov. The only "voice" I noticed in Welling / Giddins was on page 89.
Quote:

Chapter 6 "Tables of the main variations" is quite interesting for what could have been, but ultimately useless (to me anyhow) because of how it was executed. First of all it is a repetition and restructuring of the earlier material. So it could be a souped-up index of variations. Unfortunately there are early moves in the previous chapters which don't appear in chapter 6. So it looks like I will have to do my usual PGN index, in order to guarantee complete coverage.

The bibliography is quite impressive: 34 books, 9 DVDs, 8 periodicals, 3 websites, and 1 database. I wish I had all these sources! Of sources I do have, their only significant omission was Harding (1984) Philidor's Defense: A Re-Appraisal. Actually, I bet they did use Harding's book, and just didn't notice the miss. Two of their periodicals are Shakhmatny Bulletin and Shakhmatny v SSSR. Since they were willing to go there, they could also have used some Russian-language websites, which in my experience have great stuff that is often not available on English-only sites. (It's just hard to search using an English keyboard.)

I did run across one typo, on page 207 they write "see game 83", but correct is game 67. Since that's one of only a few such references I tried to follow, it seems statistically likely that there will be more such errors.

Finally, I note this endorsement on page 96.
Quote:

IsaVulpes wrote on 09/05/19 at 23:06:20:


3. Bd3 is covered, with a reference to Rabiega-Ftacnik at the end. It's about a paragraph. 3. Nd2 is also covered.

Quote:


They give "Nf6 which usually transposes to Nc3 f4 lines". The Nc3 line is with d5 and swapping off a bunch of pieces.

@ IsaVulpes

Nice post! I'd welcome your guidance on which key lines Barsky is outdated on, plus where to find the best 'updates'. Kasparov?

Quote:

The book might or might not deserve criticism for omission of key lines (I can't fully judge as I haven't got it), but it seems to me it's not really attempting to move any theoretical needles in the way other recent books on the Philidor have done -- it's just not that type of book, it seems. I don't myself think of the Philidor as 'grovelly', though; the only problem I've encountered is the odd boringly drawish position.

Quote:

No major changes perhaps, but there have been a few new ideas and maybe it's getting harder to get a meaningful edge against it -- maybe.

Hello moderators,
Can we please fix "Giddings" to "Giddins" in the thread title? Thank you.

None of this discussion nor the book really moves the needle. The opening is solid and a bit grovelly, and if you're happy with that, you're happy with that, and if you're not, you're not. There almost certainly isn't going to be any swashbuckling refutation, nor any whiz-bang rehabilitation - the opening simply is what it is, and nothing's really changed. Fair assessment?

Quote:

Thanks for clarifying. 8 ...Qc7 and 8 ...Rb8 are older moves, I believe (the latter recommended by Andrew Martin?). I'm not too sure of their status -- maybe someone knows more?

Quote:

Perhaps this is an OK version of the famous 'shuffle', but 9 Re1 here, transposing to 7 Re1 c6 8 a4 a5 (the 'traditional' defence) 9 h3(!), is surely much more common than 9 Qe2. I think that Black now normally plays 9 ...Nb6 or 9 ...h6 (9 ...ed?! 10 Qd4!) and that Negi claims White advantage against both, but maybe this isn't the last word? ...

Quote:

After 8 ...b6 here I believe 9 Qe2, idea Rd1, is meant to be the strongest. I guess after 9 ...Qc7 the plan is 10 Rd1 a6 -- maybe still a bit better for White but a bit messy?

I don't see any coverage of 7. h3, though it often reoccurs on move 9 in the main lines he gives. Negi seems to give 6. a4 not 7.a4 so I think the move order is just different.

After 7. Re1 c6 a4 he seems to cover Rb8!?, Qc7!? and b6!. The latter gives a line that continues 9. Bg5 a6!.

If I'm interpreting the explanation correctly, against the Negi line they would play

1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 e5 4.Nf3 Nbd7 5.Bc4 Be7 6.O-O O-O 7.h3 c6 8.a4 a5
9.Qe2 Qe8 with idea Bd8->Bc7.

or

1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 e5 4.Nf3 Nbd7 5.Bc4 Be7 6.O-O O-O 7.h3 c6 8.a4 b6 9.Qe2 Qc7

Michael Ayton wrote on 08/24/19 at 15:28:13:


They cover this via Nedev - Eljanov, St Vincent 2005. I think I'm missing the Qc2+Rd1 approach in the Old Indian though.

I got this book more out of curiosity and maybe to fool around a bit in blitz and I'm not familiar with either system right now, but I notice quite a bit of analysis seems to involve games of Mr. Welling, who seems to be a Dutch IM that has been playing this for many years. So I doubt it's purely recycled material.

There is quite some coverage of various move orders with the advantages and disadvantages of the options, often involving the question of the queenswap line. The authors recommend you play it. I can certainly see practical justification for this even if it's obviously not to everyone's taste.

I doubt I'll regret the 15 bucks I spent on this. It doesn't seem to deserve the reception it got so far, but as said I'm not familiar with the theory so if there's gaping holes I can't tell yet either.

FizzySoda wrote on 08/24/19 at 11:51:19:


Me 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzSYTsDjyx0

RdC wrote on 08/27/19 at 22:05:21:


Not a very good example. After 9.f4 exf4 10.Ne6 Qg8 11.Nd5 Bd6 12.Nexc7 Bxc7 13.Ne7+ Kf7 14.Nxg8 Rxg8 it's Black who'll do the hacking. Such lines are rather examples of premature attacks running out of steam.

RdC wrote on 08/27/19 at 22:05:21:

But this point stands. I'll take another step. There are no openings you can totally play on auto-pilot, not even the Hippo or the KIA.

Honestly these books baffle me sometimes. To avoid theory completely playing something like Hipopótamus on autopilot would work. These Philidor things look like some work required to avoid getting squeezed.

To do well in chess nowadays you need good opening preparation no matter what you play. At least making a good choice for Black opening then playing 1. a3 as White to lose a tempo would cut down some theory though.

But from an optical point of view, I do not know why, but playing this rewersed Philidor as White looks ugly. Just my opinion though, it should be just equal with best play. If I see it in the bookstore I would look at it..

GM Aagaard pointed out the problem with the lazy man's sicilian book. I wouldnt say it was a good book.

Checkout quality chess VLOG 4 on their youtube page.

FizzySoda wrote on 08/24/19 at 11:51:19:


The Lazy Man's Sicilian. I think that criticism is a bit harsh. The former was a fairly decent book that he helped translate didnt he?

Very similar to Play 1...d6 Against Everything by Hickl (also published by New In Chess) and the old Nigel Davies' Chessbase DVD for the "busy person" discussed here http://www.chesspub.com/cgi-bin/chess/YaBB.pl?num=1258989027

I have always thought the queenswap Philidor with doubled e-pawns is no fun and simply bad for Black.  An odd choice to promote this variation in the excerpt.  I would rather avoid it via d6, c6, Qc7 and only then e7-e5, which i recall Davies recommended on his old DVD.

ErictheRed wrote on 08/17/19 at 15:53:26:


Remember, the book's aim is avoiding main theory...

kylemeister wrote on 08/17/19 at 15:23:21:


Thanks, it looks like an interesting book, especiallty if main themes and ideas are clearly explained.

Side-Stepping Mainline Theory by Welling, Giddings. New in Chess, 2019.

From the Publisher's Webpage:
By adopting a similar set-up for both Black and White, with similar plans and techniques, you further reduce study time.


Anyone has info on what system(s) will be covered?