Nunn's Chess Openings

by John Nunn, John Emms, Joe Gallagher

Nunn's Chess Openings is written by a team of experts -- four writers who are acclaimed as outstanding chess writers and experts in their fields. The expert team's collective knowledge and experience covers all openings. Each section is written by a player with expertise in that area, enabling Nunn's Chess Openings to provide the sort of insider knowledge that can only be gained by playing an opening against tough opposition.Setting it above the rest, the majority of game references are from the 1990s. Computers have also been used to make the book extremely accurate: full use has been made of databases of millions of games; tables have been generated from computer files, eliminating notation errors, impossible variations, etc.; powerful analytical engines have assisted with the analysis of tactical positions; a final blundercheck has made sure there are no wrong moves given.

Genres: Chess, Reference, Games, Nonfiction

544 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1999

About the author

John Denis Martin Nunn is an English chess grandmaster, a three-time world champion in chess problem solving, a chess writer and publisher, and a mathematician. He is one of England's strongest chess players and once was in the world's top ten.

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Nunn is a very clever guy. He went to Oxford at age 15, and received a PhD in Algebraic Topology when he was 20. He became a chess Grandmaster the same year, and after a while gave up mathematics to turn pro. For a while, he was one of the world's top ten players. Then he started writing chess books, and it wasn't long before he was also being called one of world's best chess writers. I agree with the general consensus. He's extremely thorough and well-organised - you can rely on his research and analysis - and he puts in enough ironic asides that you don't get bored.

This ambitious book was intended as a comprehensive one-volume survey of all chess opening theory, and is a typical product of the Nunn stable. Chess openings are a large field, and the main challenge is finding enough space to give even a useful outline; as Nunn says, a page often has to summarise a whole book. Here's a nice passage from the introduction, where he talks about his workmanlike approach.

There are literally hundreds of innovations here, some of them overturning incorrect lines which have been repeated time after time in earlier opening books. However, you will have to look to find them. In a standard opening book, the author can take considerable space presenting his innovation: first of all, he lovingly details all the previous occasions on which the erroneous analysis has been given; then, with a great fanfare of trumpets, he wheels out his new move with a diagram and a bouquet of exclamation marks. All in all, he can easily spend half a page on his innovation. In Nunn's Chess Openings there is no fanfare of trumpets, though we have occasionally allowed ourselves an exclamation mark. In addition to saving vital space, this is in accordance with the general philosophy of the book: we are interested in correct analysis, so where earlier analysis has been proved incorrect we have usually just omitted it and substituted the new line.

From some people, this would smack of arrogance. Nunn, however, is good enough that it doesn't come across that way, at least not to me. He's just telling you how he's laid out the book, and it's pretty sensible. He and his team have done an excellent job. A word of warning, though: don't expect it to be more than a reference. There are almost no words, just moves, and you'll have to supply your own commentary and positional understanding to accompany the variations.

____________________________________

A friend who also likes following the chess news was telling me the other day about an interview he'd seen with Magnus Carlsen, the new world #1 and the shining hope of chess. The interviewer was foolish enough to praise Carlsen's intelligence.

"I'm not that smart," the practical Carlsen apparently answered. "Being too smart is not good for your chess career."

"How do you mean?" asked the bemused interviewer.

"Well," said Carlsen. "Look what happened to Nunn..."

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

If your into chess openings and always wondered all the possible openings you could play in chess this would be the book. Every possible opening line is in here with many variations. Although I purchased as a fun guide to glance at now and then as chess seemed to advance my interest in the book tended to lessen.

Summary: A fun book reference book for opening book fans.

[JBedient · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don't judge a book by it's cover. The cover art is atrocious, but the inner content is really useful in learning openings.