|
| Title: ECO A,
4th. edition |
Author: Chess
Informant |
| Language: - |
Pages: 583 |
| Cover:
Hardcover |
Published: 2001 |
| Publisher:
Chess Informant |
Homepage: http://www.sahovski.com/ |
| Price: £
18,00 |
ISBN: 86 7297
046 2 |
| Reviewed by: Søren
Søgaard |
Date: 1/7 2001 |
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A new edition of the well known Encyclopaedia Of Chess Openings A
(ECO A) has been released - a referencework that is known by all
serious chessplayers. ECO started nearly 30 years ago, and with this
edition they continue to be the leading reference work. The lines
and theory in ECO mostly comes from Informator-games, there is many
references to games from earlier Chess Informant books. If you own
all Chess Informant books you have a very comprehensive
encyclopaedia. If your not the lucky owner of all these volumes then
it might be an idea to buy the new Chess Informant 80 on CD-ROM. It
contains all the games from Chess Informant 1-79 (uncommented).
ECO deals with unusual firstmoves and openings like English,
Dutch, Reti, Benoni and different answers to 1.d4. Lets take a look
at the content.
Content:
- A0
Without 1. c4, 1. d4, 1. e4
- A1-A3: 1. c4
- Without 1... e5, 1... c5
- 1. c4 e5
- 1. c4 c5
- A4: 1. d4
- Without 1... Nf6, 1... f5, 1... d5
- 1... Nf6 without 2. c4
- A5: 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4
- Without 2... c5, 2... e6, 2... g6
- 2... c5 without 3. d5
- 3. d5 without 3... e6
- A6: 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 c5 3. d5 e6
- A7: 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 c5 3. d5 e6 4. Nc3 ed5 5. cd5 d6 6. e4
g6 7. Nf3
- A8-A9: 1. d4 f5
There is no explanation on how much new material that has been
added in this edition, but a closer look reveals that there is a lot
of new references from the period 1997-2000. As far as I can see
there is no games from 2001. I took a closer look at the chapter
dealing with the Dutch, and here the most important lines are
covered and they also included the most important games of this
opening. Other parts of the book that I took a close look at is at
the same high level. Here it must be said though that it is not all
chapters that has been updated since the last edition from 1996. As
an example it Larsen's opening 1.b3 is almost the same as the
previous edition, and also the 1.f4 d5 only have older references.
English (A30-A39) is the opening that takes up most space in this
edition - it takes no less than 107 pages to investigate this
opening! Not surprising though - English is one of the most popular
openings these days. As an example Carsten Hansen wrote the book
"The Symmetrical English" from Gambit last year, and he
took 256 pages to investigate only one of the setups in this
opening!!
In spite of the many opening books that is published these years,
I still think that ECO is a nice reference work that should be in
your bookshelf! If you will buy this book or the digital version is
a matter of taste. If you don't have much time to study opening
theory, you can get a long way with ECO A-E - that is if you are
prepared to buy all volumes (A-E)!!
A word of the printing: The binding of this book is of best
quality and it will survive the next many years, even if you use it
every day. The printing, paper and the diagrams is of the same high
level - something that is not always the case these days! Everybody with a Word processor
and a printer can make a book these days and publish it, but
sometimes it would have been better if they didn't ;-) We often
forget to mention these things, but the printing of ECO is of high
quality.
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