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Standard Chess Openings
by Eric Schiller

Reviewed by David Surratt, 5-18-03

Second Edition, © 2002
Cardoza Publishing
(Distributed by Simon & Schuster)
Softcover, 784 pages

Standard Chess Openings (SCO) according to the cover, is "The Complete and Definitive Reference to all Standard Chess Openings, More Than 3,000 Opening Gambit Strategies Inside!" containing "The essential concepts, tactics, and thinking behind every major chess opening." That's a tall order to fill, one that any specialty opening book would be happy to achieve. It may be too much of a claim for a compendium of this sort, which has to measure itself against such tomes as Nunn's Chess Openings (NCO), Batsford's Chess Openings, and even that ancient classic, I.A. Horowitz's Chess Openings, Theory and Practice (CO,T&P).

SCO contains an Introduction, Overview and an 8-page chapter entitled Choosing the Best Openings. The openings themselves are organized into chapters covering Open Games, Semi-Open Games, Closed Games, Indian Games, and Flank Games. Added as a "Supplement to the 2nd Edition" are ten games covering "lines that were not in the first edition" including the Berlin Defense (used successfully by Kramnik in his World Championship Match with Kasparov), a "new" approach to defending the Marshall Attack, and among others, the "Lion Defense, a new opening based on ancient principles..."

Now the Lion isn't exactly "new", depending on your definition of course. After all, the current post-Ice Age era is new, in geologic terms. The Lion has had a book out (in Dutch, I believe) for quite a number of years, and, for a time, it's own website. The Berlin Defense new? Sorry, but I think that's been around forever also, merely rehabilitated by Kramnik. Why weren't these lines covered in the 1st Edition? And why now, only added as a single lightly annotated game each in a supplement, tacked on to the end of the book?

SCO concludes with a 4-page chapter titled "Building A Repertoire" and the Indices. Schiller provides indices for ECO codes, games, openings, opening moves, and a chronological index which lists the illustrative games in SCO in the order they were played. These indices may well be the most valuable part of the book, except that instead of referring to page numbers, the indices refer the reader to game numbers. I had to search to at last locate the Taimanov Variation of the Benoni Defense (game #233 according to the index) on page 639. Schiller has put a lot of effort into cataloging the various names given to opening lines; the interested reader may wish to take a look at his list of opening names.

Now, to the meat and potatoes of SCO - the openings and their coverage. I am going to be fairly critical here because the book promises so much. Now Schiller himself says "Of course these are browsers" (referring to SCO and it's companion volumes, World Champion Openings, and Gambit Chess Openings. In my review of GCOs I basically agreed with the idea of a large opening "browser", saying:

As a reference source then, it has tremendous value. As an interesting glimpse into the heroic world of the Gambiteer, it has value. If these are reasons you would consider buying the book, then by all means buy it. If you are looking for "The Secret" of your particular gambit, or even just in-depth analysis, I suggest you look for a specialty book that only covers your gambit.

SCO however attempts to apply this browser idea to the standard openings. How well does the idea work? I looked for a few lines of personal interest...

SCO doesn't address the Alekhine-Chatard Attack in the Classical French. Now how can you leave the Alekhine-Chatard Attack out? (Schiller instead covers this important line in GCO.) In fact, in the Classical French, SCO only gives one game, the same number of games it provides for the Richter, the MacCutcheon or for that matter, each line it covers.

Is one game enough to explain an entire variation? Maybe, but it would need a lot more annotation and supplemental games than SCO provides, which is exactly: none. Contrast this to I.A. Horowitz's Chess Openings, Theory and Practice which for the Alekhine-Chatard Attack provides two idea variations, five practical variations, a page and one half of notes along with an example game; three and one-half pages in all.

The game chosen to illustrate the Taimanov Variation of the Benoni Defense is Borik-Hort, Bundesliga 1982. SCO ignores any alternatives on Black's 8th move, or the 9th move, or...

OK, it should be clear by now that you're not going to get anything but the briefest of overviews from SCO on any opening. That's OK, it's just a browser, right? Can we still buy into the idea of an opening "browser" that purports to be ""The Complete and Definitive Reference to all Standard Chess Openings" with "The essential concepts, tactics, and thinking behind every major chess opening."?

No. Not for $24.95 USD. Nor, truly, at any price. The reader would be better off purchasing NCO, BCO, ECO, or any other CO, where not only can you see the range and variety of the openings universe, but where you can get much more detailed and comprehensive coverage of the openings to boot. While the browser idea may work, for example, with gambits, here it just feels like the reader gets cheated. Standard Chess Openings offers far too little, even for the casual reader. I cannot recommend this book.