Review of 'Winning Chess Openings (Winning Chess - Everyman Chess)' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Yasser Seirawan is one of the top chess players in the US. He has written a collection of introductory books on all aspects of chess, and he is a frequent lecturer at the St. Louis chess club, with several of his lectures being available on YouTube.
In general I think Yasser Seirawan's pedagogical approach is excellent: he is pleasant, out-of-the-box, has a sweet sense of humor, and has a clear point of view on what someone's stumbling blocks might be as she learns an aspect of chess.
This book on openings takes a particular approach which I think can be quite useful.
He starts by showing how he started his games as a beginner, with a frank and humorous account of his early silly mistakes. In showing how he progresses to (still lousy) opening approaches he can help a reader understand that process and go through it more quickly.
Then …
Yasser Seirawan is one of the top chess players in the US. He has written a collection of introductory books on all aspects of chess, and he is a frequent lecturer at the St. Louis chess club, with several of his lectures being available on YouTube.
In general I think Yasser Seirawan's pedagogical approach is excellent: he is pleasant, out-of-the-box, has a sweet sense of humor, and has a clear point of view on what someone's stumbling blocks might be as she learns an aspect of chess.
This book on openings takes a particular approach which I think can be quite useful.
He starts by showing how he started his games as a beginner, with a frank and humorous account of his early silly mistakes. In showing how he progresses to (still lousy) opening approaches he can help a reader understand that process and go through it more quickly.
Then he continues with a tour of all the more important openings. The tour is rather comprehensive and gives good conceptual and philosophical explanations of aspects of the openings.
Finally he has three chapters which propose a repertoire so that you can learn just a small amount of opening theory and get going quickly without falling in to poor situations:
one chapter for white (Barcza opening, i.e. King's Indian Attack)
one chapter for black against 1. d4 (he proposes the King's Indian Defence)
and one chapter for black against 1. e4 (he proposes the Pirc defense)
The choice is a good one because with these openings you can develop in your own with limited clashes, which is good for someone transitioning from beginner to club/tournament player.
I think that this approach is excellent: everyone should have a reasonably comprehensive tour of the opening zoo, and everyone should have a simple repertoire. This book is nice because if you want to go beyond the simple repertoire you can always dive into specific sections on specific openings.
I would maybe criticize two things about this book as not having reached perfection:
1. typesetting is always a challenge in chess books -- how do you clearly separate sections, variations, topics, ...? in this book you have to get used to how he starts discussing one variation of an opening, and then he steps back and shows what other variations could have been. I don't find his way of doing it immediately intuitive, but I got used to it.
2. it might be nice if the sections on specific openings could clearly delimit a useful overview, after which you have a feeling and can skip the details so as to run on to the end to build your repertoire. Silman's Endgame Course [b:Silman's Complete Endgame Course: From Beginner to Master|83337|Silman's Complete Endgame Course From Beginner to Master|Jeremy Silman|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348296214s/83337.jpg|80468] does a good job of separating out the various levels of play so that you can study in different passes.