The English Opening - Grandmaster Repertoire 4 - Volume 2

I have all 3 of Marin's English opening books, and find them all to be outstanding. The 2nd and 3rd are a little more concise than the first, but in my opinion that makes them stronger. Marin does a great job of explaining why he chose the moves to include in the repertoire, and what the plan should be for white coming out of the opening.You will want all 3 books though - there are several lines that end up transposing into material from the other books. That happens most frequently in this book, after an Indian opening move order black can throw in e5 or c5 and up in either the 1st or 3rd book's lines. Marin directly points you to those books for transformations and doesn't repeat the material here.And, it's not Marin's way or nothing - he points out logical places where you could use other openings (Catalan, Tarrash, QGD, QGA, d4 Indian openings, etc.) instead of the proposed repertoire.As a class A/expert player, I found these great and couldn't recommend them more.

This is a very well-written and comprehensive book that is part of a three volume tome on the English opening. However, after a few uses, the pages have started to come out due to a poorly made binding. I originally gave 2 stars for my review because of the defective binding. However, I contacted Quality Chess and they replaced the defective volume free of charge, mailing me the new book all the way from Glasgow, Scotland! The binding problem has been corrected and I can once again give my highest recommendation.

I'm not sure how to describe it other than thorough. This is a bit of an encyclopedia on every reply to the English outside of the standard 1.c4 c5 and 1.c4 e5. If your learning the English I would start with Kosten's Dynamic English, but if you're looking for an in-depth reference source for "non-standard" English lines, this would be it.

A wonderful follow-up to The English Opening Volume One. If you are an afficionado of the English, I could not more highly recommend the three volume Grandmaster Repertoire written by Mihail Marin. I own all three of this series and am often reminded of their excellence while playing correspondence chess or in post-game analysis. Mr. Marin is: a great teacher, I intuit a kind man, and never withholding of his insight and novelties.

I play both sides of the positions in this volume. For deep sea divers and for amateurs!

great book

Pages near the back of the book have completely fallen out after opening the new book for the first time. Poor page binding.

It may seem unfair to criticize such a detailed and ground-breaking effort of Mihail Marin for its (too brief) coverage of a specific move order, but, since the intention was to build up a pure English Opening repertoire (based on the moves 1.c4 and 2.g3) capable of providing White with (at least) a small opening advantage, I believe that some words of criticism apply here.Having bought the books "Starting Out the English" (SOE) and "Play the Dutch" by Neil McDonald and "Leningrad System" by Stefan Kindermann, which recommend facing the English Opening with the Leningrad Dutch move order "1c4 f5 2Nc3 Nf6 3g3 g6 4Bg2 Bg7 5d3 0-0 6e4 fe4!? 7de d6 8Nge2 c5!" (Note an early exchange on e4 and a delay on moving the e pawn by Black) and illustrate their points with the games "Laylo-Nijboer" (Turin -2006) and "Gelfand-Kindermann" (Biel-1995), and having failed myself (with the aid of Fritz) to contradict their assessments that Black stood at least equal after the opening, I was eager to see what Marin would recommend against this specific move order. However I was rather disappointed to notice that the only eight pages reserved to the Dutch defense (about 180 pages were reserved to Anti-Slav Systems!) deal almost exclusively with the Stonewall pawn structure (the Classical and Leningrad Dutch were barely addressed). Marin justified this absence stating that after the moves "1c4 f5 2g3 Nf6 3Bg2 g6" the game would most likely transpose to lines already examined in the first volume ("1c4 e5" lines) (once black plays an eventual e5) and presented only one possible deviation (without the capture 6... fe4!?) which was not "effective" for black. The aforementioned games, books and authors were not mentioned at all!Given that (at least) three popular books are recommending the Leningrad Dutch move order above, I don't quite agree that transpositions to "1.c4 e5" lines would be so likely to occur.I hope this review may encourage Quality Chess and perhaps Mihail Marin himself to address this issue in the future. By now, white players aiming at a small advantage should perhaps adhere to Neil McDonald's advice (in SOE) and transpose to normal d4 lines when facing the Leningrad Dutch move order.It would be fair to mention that this was the only major gap I could find in the repertoire. In the Anti-King's Indian Chapter, for instance, Marin even admits that transposing to the fianchetto variation of the King's Indian defence might be the best option available for white, and, despite this, he provides in some detail (11 pages) a "pure English" anti-King's Indian system for die-hard English players. On the other hand some oddities fairly commom amongst club players like "1.c4 Nf6 2.g3 d5 3.cd Qxd5(!?)" (which may transpose to the line recommended by Christoph Wisnewski in "Play 1...Nc6!" where Black intends Qh5, Bh3 and 0-0-0) and "1.c4 g5" ("The killer Grob") are missing. Perhaps for some good reason these lines are considered unsound at the grandmaster level, but I suspect that sub-grandmaster readers would find it instructive to see why they are actually bad (if so). Just "Fritz" the first of them to see that matters are far from simple for White!At last, I found Marin's writing style more readable and accessible to the average reader than what would be expected from a grandmaster writing to his peers. Most probably, (advanced) non-grandmaster readers will benefit a lot from this book.PS. A small pdf sample of this book (including the Contents) is available at [...]

Clearly written but deep. The writers have put a lot of work into the book. Bold lines to play. I must confess that on some of the lines I will have to run it through the computer; to check that I can get back the material on lines that initially gambit a pawn.

A very analytical and free from computers analysis ( it does not mean that the authors have not taken help from computers) as many lines are different from Computer suggestions. The book is written for Grandmasters but is equally helpful for all players other than beginners. A must book for English Opening players.

I have purchased 3 books from Quality Chess and with fair use they have fallen apart.Very poor quality in my opinion