- Once you have played for a while you might want to look at some specific variations: for example, The Italian Game {D} (80K) for White or Black is probably all you need to know for the next year (Word 6 version with Tilburg font for download here).
- After that you might want to look at Playing White against odd Black lines {C}, Playing Black against 1. e4 {D} [incl. Two Knights' Defence (*)] and Playing Black against 1. d4 {C}. I also have a sneaking fondness for the Petroff Defence for Beginners {C} as Black. [(*) I'm delighted to say that the Wilkes-Barre/Traxler line has its own web pages at Echecs.]
N.B. Some of these booklets convert to hundreds of Kb of HTML with 8x8 GIF elements, so, I've used text-only diagrams here.
19 Jan 2000: By popular request, you can now have these four documents with the usual diagrams.
If you are curious to expand your repertoire, having got the hang of attacking play and tactics, you might want to reconsider your basic Four choices in the opening {C}. Also, Steve Martinson described some openings to look at if you have had enough of 3. Bc4.
[See also Introduction to the Sicilian, Steve Spurgeon's page at Bath, and the (Sicilian) Dragon's Lair.]
I also posted something on Gary Lane's book (an author I usually admire, and a book which Tim Harding has praised).
There are some dedicated pages on the BDG from Jyrki Heikkinen (alongside superb stuff on the Diemer-Duhm Gambit, a related Anti-French line: this is a model of how to present chess openings on the Web), Tom Purser (editor of Blackmar-Diemer Gambit World magazine) and David Flude. There is even a BDG newsgroup in existence, but there is little or no relevant traffic on it. Tom recently organised a BDG theme e-mail tournament, and you can read about my adventures if you're interested.
Dr.
Dave
This document (openings.html) was last modified on 13 Aug 2005
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