Winning Chess Openings (Winning Chess - Everyman Chess)

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Customer Reviews:

The Best Openings Book [Posted on 2006-08-22]
I never really got good at chess until I started focusing first on a simple e4 e5 with the relative strength of second moves and then relative strength of third moves and looked at it as a tree with branches in every direction. It makes sense not to go on to d4 d5 until you have explored e4 e5 out at least 10 moves out in each popular direction.

Yasser Seirawan uses a very logical arrangement of the classic games to take you down the branches of each possible move so that memorization is easy. Most importantly, he tells you WHY a certain move was made. He keeps returning you to the "main line" after he shows you the branches off to the side.

I wish I had this book about 10 years ago when I was playing in competition. I have bought a lot of chess books but I think this was money well spent. I think I will buy others in the series.

Not Recommended [Posted on 2006-11-09]
If you seriously know nothing about the opening then this book will probably help you some. However, if you already have gathered all the basic concepts (which seem to be mentioned in pretty much every chess book ever made) then this book is a waste of money. Even for the complete beginner, I reccomend the recent books Openings for White/Black Explained by Lev Alburt, Roman D., etc., which can serve as both an introduction and a full course.

I thought this book would give me a repertoir, so I would know some actual openings. However, the coverage of any one opening is so minimal you definitely dont know enough to actually play it in anysort of competetive way. To repeat: this book will not teach you to play openings competetively, it is only an introduction. Seirawan briefly covers classical openings and then covers in slightly more depth his "opening solution" which is the Kings Indian Defense versus d4, the Pirc versus e4, and the Kings Indian Attack as White. First off, I found I do not enjoy playing any of those openings at all. What is the advantage of being able to play the same 5+ moves at the start of every game? Then what after that? Well these openings are not devoid of theory and once you reach the end of the first 5 moves you have just as much work to do as with any other opening; you have just delayed the inevidable conflict for the center--which means a slower, longer, duller game. Secondly, if you do like these openings you will still have to buy more books that actually cover them!

I would reccommend, even if you are a beginner, to buy the Openings Explained for White / Black by Lev Alburt, Roman D. Besides full coverage of the openings in the repertoir book, it also briefly covers some other traditional openings (just like winning chess openings). If you want an introduction you have one in the first chapter; if you want to really LEARN an opening then you have that too. Or if you already have an idea what openings your want to play then DEFINITELY don't get this book, instead get some thorough books on that/those openings.

A perfectly dysfunctional mix of "too much" and "too little" [Posted on 2006-11-25]
What's the point of an opening book? There are two possibilities: 1)Build a reperotoire; or 2)Teach you how to play a specific opening. Seirawan's book tries to fill both categories, but spreads itself too thin and ends up being frutstrating.

The structure of WCO is just like MCO, NCO, and all the other "CO"s: it systematically presents opening after opening, giving various explanations and lines. Seirawan's book is geared to much lower rating levels than more complicated books like Modern Chess Openings, but it doesn't cover enough CONCRETE ground to be of any practical use to any rating.

The best example I can find is in the section on Alekhine's Defence. Yasser (or "Yaz" as he's known here in Seattle) gives only a single line for the opening: 1.e4 Nf6 2.e5 Nd5 3.d4 d6 4.c4 Nb6 5.ed cd 6.Be3 Nc6 7.Nc3 g6 8.c5! and white apparently has a sizeable advantage. This isn't well supported by theory, and there are many other lines black can opt for (5...ed, 6...g6, 6...N6d7 etc.) that have better results. It's almost as if the author is unwilling to engage in a discussion of the more critical lines.

It may be argued that there is a lot of textual explanation for the openings. Yes, there is, but it doesn't mean anything if you don't know what moves to play. There is little concrete basis for how to play in the openings, so you will inevitably find yourself struggling as soon as you get to the 6th move in an opening Yaz discusses.

I'll spare it the harsh "sub 3-star" rating because Seirawan's style is very engaging and fun to read. Even given the "chessic" inadequacies of the book, it's still very fun to read, and Yasser is self-depricating and funny when he writes (his style is similar to David Norwood's).

In 272 pages, Seirawan manages only a vague definition of each opening. The book doesn't, as many reviews claim, give you a reperotoire for white or black, because there simply aren't enough variations to look at. If you want to pick out an opening for white or black, thumb through WCO. Otherwise, pick up something more specific. You could get the same value from a much smaller, cheaper text.

Tries to fill too many approaches to what other opening books cover [Posted on 2006-12-25]
It is not so clear exactly what this book is trying to do. It tries to set itself up as an "Modern Chess Openings" or "Nunn's Chess Openings" when listing variations but fails by being far to sparse to be of any use. It tries to provide some ideas of what is happening in the opening like "Understanding the chess Openings", "Winning Chess Traps for Juniors" or "Ideas Behind the Openings" but yet it is far to sparse with the ideas. The mix and match, trying to do cover all of these in one book is off base. Not enough ideas for the beginner or intermediate level player, Not enough lines/variations to be of any use to an intermediate or advanced player. I think three stars is rather generous, as perhaps the just beyond beginner or just under intermediate range of player might find some small benefit to this book. Some of the "Winning Chess" series books are very well done. This is one of the few books in the series that is at the bottom end.

Sometimes Too Little, Sometimes Too Much [Posted on 2008-12-13]
The fifth book of International Grand Master Yasser Seirawan's "Winning Chess" series leaves much more to be desired than his other works, and that may be because this was not a labor of love. In the introduction, Seirawan clearly states that his intention was for book 5 to be about the endgame, which is the area he insists everyone must work on most (he's right). His publishers, though, nearly insisted that a book on openings come first, and this persuasion might have caused this to be a forced labor on his part. This is all conjecture, though, and what matters is the contents of the book itself.

As usual, the information Seirawan provides is gold. His insistence that every opening is about controlling the center is right on the money. His description of opening "rules" (don't develop the queen early, develop knights before bishops, et cetera) is likewise sound. You could expect nothing less from a GM of Seirawan's caliber, really.

The problems appear when Seirawan begins to discuss actual openings themselves. While it is apparent that Seirawan doesn't have much space to delve, many of the openings he discusses are restricted to the main lines only. Instead of going with other variations of these lines, he instead moves on to much more obscure variations that the novice is much less likely to encounter in real play.

The book is divided into Classical King Pawn Openings, Classical Queen Pawn Openings, Modern King Pawn Defenses and Modern Queen Pawn Defenses, followed by tests and solutions. Don't expect to touch on Knight openings like the Reti Opening.

Seirawan's hesitance to cover unconventional openings is well-founded, though, because spending too much time on opening study can be detrimental to the beginner. Ignoring the middle and engames only insures that each step takes the player further and further from his or her comfort zone and into unfamiliar territory. It is far better to learn opening principles and a few good openings than to spend hours and hours and hours grinding away at the million and one variations of the Sicilian Defense.

Particularly off-putting to me, though, was the tone. Seirawan writes as if he is writing to children, which made it very difficult for me to want to read the book. I'm sure the simplicity of the information and the exuberant writing style are beneficial to some, I found it detracted from the value of the information itself. Still, I would recommend the read, even to players of my level (1500) who are probably familiar with many opening variations presented because Seirawan's understanding of what makes a good opening may come as a shock to the amateur.

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