Coffeehouse Repertoire 1.e4 Volume 1

Topp-stormesteren Gawain Jones serverer et litt friskere, tøffere og ikke minst sjeldnere åpningsrepertoar med 1 e4 enn hovedvariantene som mange kjenner ganske bra. Samtidig er dette varianter som holder mål!

Denne første av to bøker handler om å spille hvit mot Siciliansk, Caro-Kann, Skandinavisk og Aljechins forsvar.

Forlagets egen omtale:

Coffeehouse Repertoire is a 1.e4 player’s dream: an arsenal of ideas from a world-class grandmaster to surprise and confound your opponents, combining coffeehouse trickery with complete theoretical soundness.

In Volume 1, GM Gawain Jones shows how to put pressure on the Sicilian, Caro-Kann, Scandinavian and Alekhine’s Defences, using lines which feature a potent combination of surprise value, objective soundness and practical effectiveness.

The Coffeehouse 1.e4 Repertoire will be completed in Volume 2, which covers 1...e5, plus the French, Pirc, Modern, Philidor and other miscellaneous Defences.

Gawain Jones is an English grandmaster, twice British Champion and winner of the 2020 European Blitz Championship. He has defeated some of the world’s best players using the ideas recommended in this book.

Fra forfatterens forord:

Welcome to the Coffeehouse 1.e4 Repertoire! These days people know their lines so well that it’s often difficult to put them under real pressure. Learning reams of main-line theory might give you a theoretical small edge, but that’s not always so useful in a position that your opponent knows well, where he understands the plans and has a good idea of where the pieces should go. Instead, the aim of this series is to play opening lines which ask different questions to those your opponent is used to, and try to put them under immediate pressure.

My selection process was quite stringent. Primarily I wanted the choices to be sound. I’ve wasted too much time trying to fix holes in dodgy lines to inflict them upon you. Of course these recommendations will work best if they surprise your opponent, but I believe they all have inherent merit too.

Secondly, I wanted the repertoire choices to pack a genuine punch. Surprising your opponent with an insipid line may work occasionally, but will hardly scare a well-prepared opponent. With this repertoire, even if your opponents know what’s coming, they won’t have an easy time.

Thirdly, I aimed for relatively offbeat choices where possible, provided they met the above two criteria. A lot of your opponents are unlikely to have faced these lines many times (if at all) before.

What started as an idea for one book expanded, so thanks to John Shaw for his patience. I hope I’ve succeeded in building a repertoire which your opponents will find challenging. In general I’ve avoided well-known main lines, but the proposed lines still pose a real challenge, and often lead to positions where mistakes from Black meet with a heavy cost. I have analysed these lines more deeply than any of the sources mentioned in the bibliography, so there should be little risk of being out-prepared.