This is an updated and largely expanded edition of the highly acclaimed Starting Out: The Sicilian. John Emms goes back to basics, studying the fundamental principles of the Sicilian and its many variations.

Presents information on the ideas and strategies for chess openings.

* 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.

Learning how to start a game of chess is one of the most daunting tasks facing intermediate adult and young chess players. Award-winning chess teacher and championship scholastic coach Pete Tamburro offers practical guidance for avoiding common pitfalls at the chessboard, as well as effective strategies for meeting troublesome openings and a choice of openings reflecting his focus on ideas over memorization.

Most chess opening books are either too detailed or too shallow. Chess Opening Essentials has exactly the right balance and is an accessible primer and a reference book at the same time. It gives a flavor of how every opening works and points at the various middlegame plans that apply after the opening has ended. Chess Opening essentials helps beginners to develop a solid understanding of fundamental opening ideas, gives casual players the ability to choose the opening that suits their style and taste and is a tool for club players to test and review their opening repertoire as well as a reference book to which advanced players keep returning. The authors do not propagate forcing tactical variations to be memorized mechanically, but explain what you should actually be trying to achieve when playing the opening of your choice. They include the main alternative responses and give clear indications for further study.

Most chess opening books are either too detailed or too shallow. Chess Opening Essentials has exactly the right balance and is an accessible primer and a reference book at the same time. It gives a flavor of how every opening works and points at the various middlegame plans that apply after the opening has ended.Chess Opening essentials helps beginners to develop a solid understanding of fundamental opening ideas, gives casual players the ability to choose the opening that suits their style and taste and is a tool for club players to test and review their opening repertoire as well as a reference book to which advanced players keep returning.The authors do not propagate forcing tactical variations to be memorized mechanically, but explain what you should actually be trying to achieve when playing the opening of your choice. They include the main alternative responses and give clear indications for further study.

An invaluable guide to how modern chess openings are played. This major new work surveys all chess openings, providing a guide to every critical main line and featuring extensive descriptions of the typical strategies for both sides. These commentaries will be welcomed by all club and tournament players, as they will better help them handle middlegame positions arising from each opening.

Practical Chess Openings is a basic openings book covering all the major openings, in alphabetical order. At the beginning of each section is a general description of the opening and its history, including the names of famous players who played it. The opening lines are in Descriptive Notation and are arranged in columns from the most popular to the least popular. Nowadays chess grandmasters do not study opening books. Instead they work with computer databases with millions of games in them, and then run them through chess analysis programs like Fritz, Houdini and Rybka, searching for new ideas and for flaws in their rival grandmaster's analysis. Amateur chess players cannot compete against this. We must just play for the enjoyment of the game without any hope of ever making grandmaster status. Having a book with the latest most up to date lines is of no added value. A serviceable, shorter and highly readable book like Fine's "Practical Chess Openings" is just as good and perhaps even better than a new book crammed with all the latest stuff.

Christoph Scheerer examines in depth the greatest opening ideas of all time. Discover the stories behind them and learn how you can use these ideas to improve your own chess.