Recently on Amazon.Com I purchsed a book that I originally bought upon it's initial publication back in 1972. At that time I was not "chessically" ( Is there such a word ? ) sophisticated enough to appreciate the book and soon discarded it.

  The name of this gem of chess insight is Baroque Chess by Richard Wincor. Mr. Wincor is not (or was not...deceased?? ) a chess master, but an earnest enthusiast of the game as are most members of this site.

  However, Mr. Wincor was obviously a profound thinker when it came to chess.

   His whole thesis of "Baroque Chess" is that the average player is wasting time and energy in playing "book openings" such as The Ruy Lopez or Queens Gambit.

 Likewise for black, playing book defenses against the aforesaid openings is an exercise in frustration. It's not that the average player is too good for book openings...the book openings are too good for the average player! Only a master really knows how to handle them.

Therefore Mr. Wincor advises a "Baroque" approach to chess.  Using openings and defenses that are bizarre  ?? offbeat, yet sound enough to give the player solid equality in openings or defenses.

For white Wincor advises The Dutch Stonewall, The KIA starting with 1. d3.Or 1. d3 followed by 2. f4 (Balough's Defense reversed).  For black he recommends either 1. ..d6 or 1. ..c6 sneaking into the Old Indian Defense as favored by Nimzovitch, tartakower and Bronstein.

 With a new found appreciation i have found this book a treasure trove of insight and fresh chessic outlook that has given me greater pleasure with lesser tension in my openings and defenses, not to mention victories.

 I highly recommend Baroque Chess Openings by Richard Wincor.

It was a great book. I lost my copy of it and haven't been able to find another.

I opened this topic thinking it was going to be about the little-known chess variant usually known as Baroque Chess.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_chess

That was kind of funny.  We are encouraged not to play book openings in the fourth paragraph, then encouraged to play book openings in the seventh.  Which is it?