Grandmaster Repertoire 5: The English Opening Vol. 3 [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Mihail Marin's three-volume series on the English is incredibly deep and thorough, so much so that unless you are master strength, it may just overwhelm you. The set is basically an opening repertoire for White, i.e., it could have been called something like "White to play and win with the English."

The depth of the analysis is staggering, presenting the reader with a very real practical problem: how to best make use and take command of the 1000+ pages contained in the three volumes. This is no mean task, as Marin, a superb author and analyst by any standard, clearly has done a tremendous amount of work and research to produce what surely will be regarded as his opus magnum.

Having three or for variations appearing around move 20 or so is more the norm than the exception. Marin spares no effort to probe the secrets of every line and thematic concept. He complements the presentation with original analysis and suggestions. But how a player interested in using these books for actually playing the English should proceed is not in this case a frivolous question.

This practical problem is further exacerbated by an unfortunate omission by the author to offer any guidelines about how to use the books. Acknowledging the complexity and challenge the densely packed material present by including several pages in each volume explaining author's recommended use of the material would have gone a long way to help and guide the reader. As it stands now, the reader, especially the less experienced or weaker (under ELO 2000) player, runs the risk of being so completely overwhelmed by the tsunami of information that the decision might be made to move on to other, more easily grasped material.

To some degree, that would be a shame, for Marin has done five-star work with these books. But extracting meaningful interaction from them may certainly pose a daunting dilemma for many readers. In addition to presenting a practical, meaningful road map for these books, the author (or perhaps more accurately the publisher) could have made these books much more user-friendly by repeating all the introductory moves before setting out material for yet another sub-variation. By this I mean, for example, that the reader is faced with many variations and sub-sets that occur after the 10th or 15th move of a given line. The variation in question is headed just by the move itself.

Let's say after White's 17th move, there are four possible responses by Black that the author presents. It would have extremely helpful before each of the possible black replies on the 17th move, if the all moves from the very beginning were given. The way it stands now, one has to flip back searching for the moves that lead up to the move discussed. That sounds simple, but in fact when you are on move 17 and there have been four major variations each with four choices, it can become quite a chore. True, not many opening books use this technique, bit with material this complicated and confusingly similar, it should have been done here.

Finally, two of the three volumes that I own are already falling apart. The pages are simply falling out. This tends to be happening toward the back of the book, but of course it should not be happening at all. I should also mention that I have encountered this problem -- some form of poor or flawed binding -- with other books by this publisher.

So, we have five stars for the content, three for the presentation and one for the production...overall, three stars.

Parker R.