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Gambit Chess Books - Openings - General
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Mastering the Chess Openings - Volume 2
by John Watson
Publication Date: April 2007
Editorial Review:
For most chess-players, opening study is sheer hard work. It is hard to know what is important and what is not, and when specific knowledge is vital, or when a more general understanding is sufficient. Tragically often, once the opening is over, a player won't know what plan to follow, or even understand why his pieces are on the squares on which they sit. John Watson seeks to help chess-players achieve a more holistic and insightful view of the openings. In his previous books on chess strategy, he explained vital concepts that had previously been the domain only of top-class players. Here he does likewise for the openings, explaining how flexible thinking and notions such as 'rule-independence' can apply to the opening too. Watson presents a wide-ranging view of the way in which top-class players really handle the opening, rather than an idealized and simplified model.
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Mastering the Chess Openings - Volume 1
by John Watson
Publication Date: October 1, 2006
Editorial Review:
For many chess-players, opening study is sheer hard work. It is difficult to know what is important and what is not, and when specific knowledge is vital, or when a more general understanding is sufficient. Tragically often, once the opening is over, a player won't know what plan to follow, or even understand why his pieces are on the squares on which they sit. John Watson seeks to help chess-players achieve a more holistic and insightful view of the openings. In his previous books on chess strategy, Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy and Chess Strategy in Action, he explained vital concepts that had previously been the domain only of top-class players.
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Creative Chess Opening Preparation
by Viacheslav Eingorn
Publication Date: September 1, 2006
Editorial Review:
Grandmaster Eingorn is an chess opening trendsetter. Throughout his career, he has introduced many novel concepts in the openings, and some of the systems he has introduced have gone on to become absolute main lines, such as the Rb1 Exchange Grünfeld. Here he explains the methods by which he prepares his openings and works out new systems from scratch, and how readers can do the same.
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Understanding the Chess Openings
by Sam Collins
Publication Date: July 30, 2005
Editorial Review:
This major new work surveys all chess openings, providing a guide to every critical main line and featuring descriptions of the typical strategies for both sides. These commentaries will be welcomed by all club and tournament players, as they will help them to handle the middlegame positions arising from each opening better, and will equip them to find the best continuation when their opponents deviate from the standard paths.
Covers all chess openings, with verbal explanations of the ideas. This is the first book of the modern era to do this.
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How to Build Your Chess Opening Repertoire
by Steve Giddins
Publication Date: April 2003
Editorial Review:
In this book, the first to focus on these issues, Steve Giddins provides common-sense guidance on one of the perennial problems facing chess-players. He tackles questions such as: whether to play main lines, offbeat openings or 'universal' systems; how to avoid being 'move-ordered'; how to use computers; if and when to depart from or change your repertoire. Giddins argues that from novice to grandmaster, a player's basic task when choosing a repertoire is the same: he needs to select openings that suit his playing style and that he can play with confidence. The repertoire should not require more memory work and study than he is capable of, or has time for.
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An Explosive Chess Opening Repertoire for Black
by Jouni Yrjölä & Jussi Tella
Publication Date: February 1, 2002
Editorial Review:
This book equips the reader with everything he or she needs to know to play Black in a game of chess. Two experienced Finnish players have described an exciting repertoire based on the move 1...d6 in reply to whatever White's first move happens to be. Black's strategy is hypermodern and dynamic: White is encouraged to seize space, while Black develops his pieces rapidly and actively, waiting for the ideal moment to attack and destroy White's central bastions. The variations advocated have been proven in top-level play and have quick-strike potential if White is at all careless or imprecise. The repertoire is based around the Pirc Defence and the variations 1 d4 d6 2 c4 e5 and 1 d4 d6 2 Nf3 Bg4, which fit seamlessly together with 1...d6 systems against White's various flank openings.
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The System: A World Champion's Approach to Chess
by Hans Berliner
Publication Date: March 1999
Editorial Review:
Hans Berliner is one of the most successful correspondence chess players of all time, and was utterly dominant in the 5th World Championship. Here, for the first time, he explains the set of principles - The System - that he used to guide him to the right moves. Readers will be astonished by the simplicity and power of Berliner's methods as he takes several major openings and subjects them to System principles, and finds radically new approaches to them.
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Play The Open Games As Black
by John Emms
Publication Date: March 1, 1998
Editorial Review:
This book fills a gaping chasm in chess literature. For years, those who wish to take on the black side of the Ruy Lopez have had to muddle their way through against the variety of alternative openings at White's disposal. This book gives a choice of systems for Black, to counter anything White might try in order to avoid the Ruy Lopez - the Scotch, King's Gambit, Italian Game, Four Knights, etc. Grandmaster Emms is ideally qualified to deal with this subject, having faced them as Black, but also having played many of them as White before graduating to the Ruy Lopez.
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101 Chess Opening Traps
by Steve Giddins
Publication Date: September 1, 1998
Editorial Review:
The only thing more humiliating than losing a game quickly is to lose a game quickly to a known opening trap. On the other hand, the easy point scored by the trapper is a great confidence booster, and allows the winner a good rest before the next game in a competition.
This book shows that no-one should feel safe from an opponent armed to the teeth with cunning traps. Steve Giddins (who lived in Russia for a time) has collected his material from a wide variety of sources, some not normally available in the West.
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101 Chess Opening Surprises
by Graham Burgess
Publication Date: March 1, 1998
Editorial Review:
Most chess players are fed a set of dogmatic rules about how the opening must be played. The result: stereotyped, unimaginative play. The opening surprises in this book land like bombshells in the apparent calm of standard openings and disorientate your opponents as they grapple with original problems. This book is a treasure-trove of unusual ideas at an early stage of the opening, yet running against the grain of conventional play. Each idea has quick-strike potential and is supported by enough concrete analysis to enable you to try it with confidence.
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Chess Books 
