The average chess player spends too much time on studying opening theory, often focusing on lines that are popular among grandmasters. But amateurs shouldn't slavishly copy the choices of GMs. The main necessity for club players is to emerge from the opening with a reasonable position, from which you can simply play chess and pit your own tactical and positional understanding against that of your opponent. Gerard Welling and Steve Giddins recommend the Old Indian-Hanham Philidor set-up as a basis for both Black and White. They provide ideas and strategies that can be learned in the shortest possible time and require the bare minimum of maintenance and updating. Welling and Giddins deliver exactly what you need: rock-solid positions that you know how to handle. By adopting a similar set-up for both colours, with similar plans and techniques, you further reduce study time. With this compact and straightforward opening approach, club players will have more time to focus on what is really decisive in the vast majority of non-grandmaster games: tactics, positional understanding and endgame technique.
Price history
Oct 25, 2021
€16.07