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This review is in two parts. The first is a short review of GM Neil McDonald’s book Starting Out: 1 e4!, and the second is an over-due rant. My Review Neil McDonald has written some of my favorite chess books in the last few years including Chess: The Art of Logical Thinking and The Art of Planning in Chess. His description of the action after each move makes for a very instructive read. So, when Starting Out: 1 e4! came out, I was hoping for another homerun. Unfortunately, the ball never got out of the infield. Although McDonald’s commentary throughout the games is not bad (though not as good as the above titles), the place where the book falls off dramatically is the amount of coverage given each opening. For example, the first chapter begins with the infamous Latvian Gambit (1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 f5). And how much coverage are you given? One lightly annotated game. That’s it. Even worse, the game is a blow out between IM Gary Lane (2445) and a player rated 1973 named Maciefj Wojnar.
The next opening covered is the rarely seen Elephant Gambit (1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 d5). However, this time you only get half-a-game! That’s right. After move 15, Lane writes: “Enough. Despite a stubborn resistance, Black resigned at move 30.” Since the Elephant Gambit is such a rare bird, it could be argued that it really doesn’t belong in the book and should have been left out to free up more space for the other, more important, more popular openings. Still, if you are going to include it, than you really need to include more than half-a-game’s worth of coverage! Moving on, I decided to check out the chapter on the venerable Caro-Kann Defense (the very first opening I ever played against 1.e4 in tournaments.) McDonald writes:
“Let’s try the Panov-Botvinnik Attack…” Let’s try? Uh, sorry but this does not really instill confidence in the reader. Better would have been: “I have played several lines against the Caro, and from my experience the Panov-Botvinnik is White’s best try for an advantage.” And even more egregious is the last sentence: “It is easy to play and easy to understand, whilst at the same time being hard for Black to meet.” Easy to play and easy to understand?? The IQP (isolated queen pawn), which is what this opening often leads to, is complicated and requires extremely accurate play whether you are on the White or the Black side. To say otherwise is just misleading. In fact, GM Daniel King just put out a ChessBase DVD called Power Play 6 that spends over a dozen games (mostly of Karpov’s) looking at how to play with and against an IQP. Check it out and you will see just how complicated things can get. Moving on, the opening getting the most coverage (75 pages) is, not surprisingly, the Sicilian. McDonald covers: the Classical, Scheveningen, Najdorf, Dragon, Sveshnikov, Kaslashnikov, Taimanov, as well as some lesser played lines like the Kan. Needless to say, the coverage is the bare minimum, and so you will still need to pick up a book on your favorite variation that goes into much more detail so that you are properly prepared. I want to emphasize that it’s not that the lines recommended by McDonald are bad, because they’re not. It’s just that the amount of coverage given each line is woefully insufficient. It’s sort of like sending your soldiers off to battle with a promise of all the latest weaponry and munitions, except that when they get to the battlefield they discover the only ammunition sent along was what they already had in the chamber of their weapons. What they have been given is not what they were promised. The hype doesn’t match the reality! My Rant The idea that you can provide an entire repertoire for 1.e4 against everything Black can throw at White in only 200 pages seems a bit of fantasy to me. Heck, there are entire 350-page books on one variation of one line in the Sicilian, so how are you going to teach the “starting out” player everything he needs to know in one book? From the back cover:
“Against all strengths of player” Really? Uh, no. And it’s this kind of blatant hype that is so prevalent on many chess book covers that I find so offensive. More BCH (Back Cover Hype):
Now, the thing that I find totally disingenuous is that in the above BCH, Everyman Chess is trying to sell me on the idea that my problem is trying to play offbeat stuff. That what I really need to be successful at the chess board are “The recommended lines [that] have stood the test of time and are regularly employed by Grandmasters.” Well, if this is true than what am I suppose to make of the BCH on another Everyman Chess book that just came out, Play 1b4!:
So, let me see if I have this straight. According to the BCH on Play 1b4! I should “surprise my opponent on the first move,” play “creatively...take the game into relatively unknown territory” and “force Black players onto their devices.” But according to the BCH on Starting Out: 1e4!, “There's a strong temptation amongst beginners and improving players to opt solely for tricky lines in order to snare unsuspecting opponents, but this approach has only short-term value. As you improve and your opponents become stronger, very often these crafty lines don't stand up to close scrutiny…” So which is it? Which book’s hype is to be believed, since each is discounting the other? Well, first let me first say shame on Everyman Chess for doing this. Instead of “hyping” their books with BS, why not just say something more truthful like, “If you are tired of always playing Ruys and Sicilians, and want some fun, why not surprise ‘em with 1 b4. After all, Bent Larsen used it to beat Walter Browne in 1974!” In other words, there is no need to tell us that this latest opening book contains the secrets to the greatest opening ever invented. The fact is that almost all openings are “playable” (I mean, if Naka can get away with 2. Qh5?!”). What you have to do is simply find out what works for YOU. If you enjoy the “offbeat” stuff such as 1.b4, then that’s what you should play. If you like the more complicated Ruy lines, than obviously that’s what you should play. So, ignore the hype, find out what you like, and then “play the hell out of it” is this reviewer’s advice! The Bottom Line
As I mentioned above, Neil McDonald has written some excellent chess books…
unfortunately, Starting Out: 1e4! isn’t one of them. While
there is nothing wrong with his suggestions, the coverage of the recommended
lines is simply too thin and leaves you woefully unprepared to actually use
them in a chess tournament. On a scale of 1-10, Starting
Out: 1 e4! by Neil McDonald gets a 5. From the Publisher's website: Extract in ChessBase format (zipped)
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