Deep, instructional analyses
Ever since Magnus Carlsen declared his preference for freestyle chess, young players have been wondering, “Is this the end of openings that we have learnt?” No, not quite. Indeed, freestyle chess is exciting and it has extraordinary appeal. It deserves every support it has got from players like Carlsen. However, it has a long way to go. Note that Carlsen and his peers have not given up on the game that we have known all these years.
The question of interest for us is, “How do they play their openings?”
Now there is no dearth of information on opening theory in chess books, magazines and websites. However, one has to make a distinction between quality and quantity. In my view, the leaders in the field are ChessBase, ChessPublishing.com and Chessable.com.
ChessBase publishes a number of DVDs on individual openings and main variations. The flagship, ChessBase Magazine, offers a dozen opening surveys and three opening DVDs every two months. Its output goes directly into the Opening Encyclopaedia. This is helpful to a player as he cannot keep track of every opening system analysed in CB Magazine year after year.
The current edition of Opening Encyclopaedia has as many as 1524 opening articles, 100 videos and 7850 opening surveys right up to March 2025. It has a database of 41056 games played right till the end of 2024.
From 2024 to 2025 new repertoire ideas and new videos have been added to this edition.
What can the Encyclopaedia do for you? Essentially, it offers building blocks for your opening repertoire. You have to choose what suits your temperament and style. Thereafter, you have to see which lines have stood the test of time and which others are making a return.
Here let me offer a general guideline: Opening surveys from 2024 to 2025 along with games offer a fair idea of recent practice. So do check out the variations. Use the older surveys and games for ideas. In some cases, lines have merely gone out of fashion, and they are still intrinsically sound. In other cases, lines have undeservedly fallen by the wayside on account of a resounding victory. So verify both ideas and variations. The engine is of course an ally, but use your own judgement at the end of the day.
It’s said, “A week is a long time in politics”. I would say, a month is a long time in chess. Soon after this Encyclopaedia appeared, quite a few super tournaments have been played. Even as I write these lines, the FIDE Grand Swiss has come to an end in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. So it is important to understand theory and also how to put it in practice.
In this Encyclopaedia, Balász Csonka offers an analysis of an important line in the Spanish Berlin Defence (C67). Here we do not have to deal with the Berlin Wall that Kasparov could not break in the 2000 BrainGames World Championship Match against Kramnik. This is a more direct and aggressive way of playing the Spanish. Csonka’s work is deep & detailed, and so I shall limit myself to a miniature that shows how White can win in this opening. The Berlin looks very simple, and it is only when you face it that you begin to see that there is more to it than meets the eye. For this reason, I have offered the following game with my own annotations for readers not familiar with theory.
Now let us see a game that followed an unusual experiment in Casablanca last year. The GMs were given opening positions from historic games and asked to continue play from that point. Carlsen and Anand were given a position from the Evans Gambit that Steinitz and Chigorin had battled on before. While Chigorin held the Evans to be sound, Steinitz believed, it could be beaten. Both took strong principled positions and defended their beliefs in play as if it were a matter of life and death.
Mikhail Chigorin facing Wilhelm Steinitz
So Carlsen and Anand had the challenge set before them. Could they improve on the performance of their great predecessors? Here is what happened:
Now let us see a proper analysis of both this opening and the game by Tanmay Srinath.
Is the Evans Gambit playable in 2025? Yes. If you love sheer romance and adventure in chess, it’s for you. It is also a surprise weapon in rapid and blitz tournaments. However, you have to be thorough in your preparation.
Gambits are fun. However, it is also important to learn a standard opening like the Spanish in king pawn openings. Admittedly, older classical systems like the Main Line Chigorin (C97-C99) have gone out of fashion. They are not found in this Encyclopaedia. However, they still deserve to be studied from the games of great masters. It’s part of one’s education and understanding of the great chess tradition and culture.
In the second part of the Review, I shall deal with semi-open games. Watch this space.
To be continued
Max Euwe became the fifth World Chess Champion after beating Alexander Alekhine in the 1935 World Championship match. A maths teacher by profession, Euwe remained an amateur throughout his life, but was still the best chess player in the Netherlands, and one of the world’s best players. Euwe holds the record for the most Dutch national championships, with twelve. After winning the World Championship, Euwe was also the world’s best player for a while. He lost the title again in 1937 in the rematch against Alexander Alekhine.
Free video sample: Openings
From the Publisher’s site
Exploring the Opening Encyclopedia
Links
Opening Encyclopaedia 2022 Review: Open Games
Opening Encyclopaedia 2024: Introduction and Open Games
Opening Encyclopaedia 2024: Semi-Open Games
Further Reading
- How to Open a Chess Game (RHM Press 1974)
- Chess Opening Essentials Vol. 1 The Complete 1.e4 (New in Chess 2007)
- Mastering the Chess Openings Vols. 1-4 by John Watson (Gambit Publications 2006-10)
- The Ruy Lopez: A Guide for Black by Sverre Johnsen and Leif Johanessen(Gambit Publications 2007)
- The Ruy Lopez Revisited by Ivan Sokolov (New in Chess. 2009)
- The Chigorin Bible: A Classic Defence to the Ruy Lopez by Ivan Sokolov and Ivan Salgado Lopez (Thinkers Publishing 2018)
- The Zaitsev System by Alexey Kuzmin (New in Chess 2016)
- The King’s Gambit by John Shaw (Quality Chess 2013)
YOUR EASY ACCESS TO OPENING THEORY: Whether you want to build up a reliable and powerful opening repertoire or find new opening ideas for your existing repertoire, the Opening Encyclopaedia covers the entire opening theory on one product.
