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Last update: Friday June 3, 2005 9:44
by Nick de Firmian
Batsford, 708 pages, £19.99
It is
now over ten years since the 13th edition of this classic work was produced,
and so no doubt it was time for a new edition. In case any readers thought that
they had already seen a new edition of MCO earlier this year they are not mistaken,
as this work was originally published by the American publishers McKay in March.
This Batsford edition was, however, updated prior to being printed and so is
not out of date, although many club players probably would not worry too much
about this anyway, especially if they were considering buying a new openings
reference work to last for several years. The alternatives to MCO meanwhile
are currently Sahovski Informant's Small Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings and,
of course, Everyman's Nunn's Chess Openings.
Who wrote what?
De Firmian explains that despite putting in "20 months of long hours" he still needed a lot of assistance with this project, and so he wisely recruited a number of other experts. Thus GM John Fedorowicz wrote the chapters on the Benko, the Bogo-Indian, the Grunfeld and the King's Indian; IM John Donaldson wrote about the Accelerated Dragon and co-authored the Slav and Semi-Slav chapters; IM Elliot Winslow and National Master Stephen Brandwein authored the chapters on the Queen's Gambit Declined and did most of the work "on the romantic-era double king pawn openings"; and Senior Master Bruce Leverett contributed on the English. Now before any European readers panic, as will soon be seen, the quality of the writing by the lower titled of the above authors is far less to worry about than that of certain lines by some of the stronger players from whom one probably expected more.
MCO's Bibliography
Now it is not usual to comment on a book's bibliography, but MCO's is so extraordinary that it could not really be ignored here. De Firmian's introduction explains that "the raw material [came] from a million-plus game database [and] over one hundred books on specific openings", along with some other materials, such as various unnamed magazines. Dealing with the first of his points, in this database age it seems strange that he could not find at least two million games, but provided that they contain only games from high-quality events, and not tournaments like the World U-8 Girls Championship, then one million games should be plenty. For some reason, although there is a bibliography only some of the hundred plus sources are listed and the selection does seem a little bizarre. Burgess and Nunn's The New Classical King's Indian is listed, but not their companion volume, The Main Line King's Indian, and indeed this work may not have been consulted as 7.Be3 in the Classical King's Indian is bizarrely omitted by Fedorowicz. Elsewhere possibly Andy Martin's Trends in the Queen's Gambit Declined Tarrasch and Semi-Tarrasch might have been worth consulting, assuming that no better and proper books have appeared on the opening since the publication of this pamphlet. For other openings, however, this excuse does not exist; for example the only Grunfeld work listed is that of Pein and Mikhalchishin's The Exchange Grunfeld when several other works on this opening have appeared recently, such as Jonathan Rowson's Understanding the Grunfeld (which is incidentally highly recommended for all those wanting to know more about this opening and especially 'Delroy').
Inclusion of Openings
One important point of NCO is that not just the main line openings are featured, but there is also a fair mention of slightly less common, but by no means obscure, openings such as the Modern. Now NCO contains approximately four pages of coverage on the Modern with c4, whilst in MCO it receives just one page. This could well be considered a little unfair, especially as the opening is not at all unpopular. Those who do specialise in non-main line d-pawn openings probably will be generally disappointed with MCO's coverage of them with the Trompowsky (v 1...Nf6) receiving just one column's worth of coverage (there are six columns per page) and the Barry just one footnote which ends on move 6 and features a dubious sixth move by the White player. Possibly Americans have much lower opinions of offbeat d-pawn openings than the English, and so maybe Mark Hebden should promptly set off on the American tournament circuit, but they do still give proper coverage to most d-pawn main line openings. The introduction explains that "some pages contain dense material, reflecting the current focus on these openings, while others are less dense and more suitable for beginners". Now this seems rather silly as even professional players do not by any means all play fashionable openings. The point is also rather debatable when applied to the amount of space devoted to each opening. Now the Meran Semi-Slav has always been fairly popular, but was it really so popular in the 90's that it deserves 11 pages of theoretical assessment, when the 6.Qc2 anti-Meran, which was also very popular in the 90's, receives just four columns and the main line Slav with 5.a4 just three pages. 1.e4 openings, which take up over half this work, also raise some questions about space allocation. 1.e4 e5 openings, excluding the Ruy Lopez, take up over a staggering 90 pages, compared with under forty in NCO, which also has just 544 pages in total. This seems a little bizarre as many of these gambits are no longer popular at international level, but is possibly explained by them being very popular in the U.S. or that De Firmian was a little too generous with the amount of space he allocated on them to Winslow and Brandwein.
Quality of the analysis and how up to date is it?
There are many references to 1997 games throughout, but in certain chapters a lack of post 1997 games and especially in certain chapters is apparent. Winslow and Brandwein writing on non Ruy Lopez 1.e4 e5 openings refer to a large number of recent games, which is especially impressive considering that many of these openings are none too common. De Firmian's own sections are not all completely up to date and it does appear that he was possibly so busy that certain completed chapters were updated only if a game was played in it by a member of the '2700 Club'. A good example of how much of his material is already dated is that the trendy 7...Nc6 in the 6.Bg5 Najdorf (and the Najdorf is a favourite opening of De Firmian's) receives just one footnote and Black has been known to have a ninth move improvement in the quoted line since at least late 1997. It is, however, perhaps a bit unfair to pick on this one line of the Najdorf as De Firmian's coverage of this opening is generally very good. Elsewhere it is hard to find fairly important lines that have been omitted, other than the grotesque omission of 7.Be3 in the Classical King's Indian which has even been played several times in world championship matches, and other than this the King's Indian coverage is good with a reference even to the interesting 5 Bd3 0-0 6 Nge2 Nc6 7 Bg5 of Conquest-Nunn, 4NCL 2000. Other notable features of MCO: MCO, like NCO, has tried to avoid wasting space by restricting its contents to just two pages, but unlike with NCO there is no detailed index of variations and so it is not so easy to find a specific variation. MCO's contents is also not one hundred percent accurate, with the Birds page reference being slightly faulty. It's rather unusual in that it has a brief section on tips for the novice, when why would a novice be reading such an advanced work anyway? With regard to MCO's analysis it is good that they do mention annotators' names when quoting from their analysis, whilst footnotes can end in either symbols or text explanations. Sadly MCO's columns, a rather stringent six per page (as opposed to a sensible number, depending on the number of important lines in an opening in NCO) do not contain an assessment at the end which is a rather serious omission. This forces readers who are quickly trying to locate the best line on an opening to read through many footnotes to locate it. NCO is meanwhile much more dense than MCO and so those who like textual comments and blank space will prefer the latter. MCO, like BCO2, also has a historical introduction, to each opening, which may make the book more appealing to some.
Conclusion
As with most books MCO has its plusses and minuses and some openings definitely receive much better coverage than others. MCO cannot compete throughout with NCO for depth, and in places quality, of analysis, but if pages and pages of languageless variations are not your choice then De Firmian's work, with its explanatory notes, may be better. De Firmian, who has undoubtedly worked very hard on this project, strongly denies in his introduction that MCO is for "average" players. Howeverr, whilst this book will satisfy some strong players, for a club player looking for a reference work, in the style of BCO2 or previous editions of MCO, to last for a number of years, and one which is not too daunting to open, then MCO may well be a good choice.