As in Volume 1, which examines 1 e4, I work from the ground up, starting with the very first moves of each opening to explain its elementary properties. This second volume of Mastering the Chess Openings investigates openings in which White plays 1 d4. His pupils include the 1997 World Junior Champion, Tal Shaked. In 1999, Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy, Watson's first book for Gambit, won the British Chess Federation Book of the Year Award and the United States Chess Federation Fred Cramer Award for Best Book. His groundbreaking four-volume work on the English firmly established his reputation in the 1980s, and he has produced a string of top-quality works since. International Master John Watson is one of the world's most respected writers on chess. It also offers both entertainment and challenging study material in openings such as the Nimzo-Indian, King's Indian and the entire Queen's Gambit complex. This volume, focusing on queen's pawn openings, is a book that will make chess-players think hard about how they begin their games. 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. Here he does likewise for the openings, explaining how flexible thinking and notions such as 'rule-independence' can apply to the opening too. In his previous books on chess strategy, he explained vital concepts that had previously been the domain only of top-class players.
John Watson seeks to help chess-players achieve a more holistic and insightful view of the openings. 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. 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.
For most chess-players, opening study is sheer hard work.
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