Gambit Publications FCO - Fundamental Chess Openings

Description

* The perfect survival guide to the chess openings * All openings covered * Detailed verbal explanations of plans for both sides * Up-to-date and featuring many tips and recommendations * Insights into the 'character' of each opening * Written by one of the world's foremost opening experts The first moves of a chess game define the nature of the whole struggle, as both players stake their claim to the critical squares and start to develop their plans. It is essential to play purposefully and to avoid falling into traps or reaching a position that you don't understand. This is not a book that provides masses of variations to memorize. Paul van der Sterren instead offers a wealth of ideas and explanation, together with the basic variations of each and every opening. This knowledge will equip players to succeed in the opening up to good club level, and provide a superb grounding in opening play on which to build a more sophisticated repertoire. The strategies he explains will, unlike ever-changing chess opening theory, remain valid as long as chess is played, and so the time spent studying this book will be rewarded many times over. Grandmaster Paul van der Sterren has won the Dutch Championship on two occasions, and in 1993 reached the Candidates stage of the World Chess Championship. He is an internationally renowned chess writer and editor: he was one of the founding editors of New in Chess , for whose Yearbooks he has contributed more than 150 opening surveys. Review: good as expected - like a chess bible, paper and quality are good. An hardcover will be a good idea and redesign this cover will be "fundamental" , anyway this is a must have. Review: Motivates to play better - There are many books on chess openings. The famous ones are all good, and so is FCO. But the factors that also makes difference in the learning experience are binding quality, paper quality, font size and print quality. And on that matter, this specific publication excels as the quality is just right.