BOOK OF THE WEEK: Openings for Amateurs
“I did not want to write simply another repertoire book. There are entirely too many of those. Aside from the material on openings I’ve written in various media that people have valued, I felt there had to be something in addition that would help our “club player”. Then, it occurred to me: let’s find out how the club players are playing!” - Pete Tamburro
Once again, we continue with our new BOOK OF THE WEEK promotion exclusively for Chess.com. Every week we will feature a new or notable book for purchase via our website at a significant discount using a coupon code.
This week's book is Openings for Amateurs.
Openings for Amateurs is an ideal 'first opening book' for players rated around 1100-1500 USCF, though players up to 1900 can benefit as well. Pete Tamburro divided his book into two sections: primer and theoretical. The primer covers opening principles and thematic opening mistakes, helping club players become ready to learn theory. This section is divided into 40 short sections designed to quickly teach a principle, theme, or answer a thematic question.
Section 6 of the primer is covered here to show the sort of instruction you can expect.
The theoretical section that follows is not overwhelming. The main focus is understanding the main ideas, illustrated by 53 model games. Some deeper theory is also covered, but this section mainly focuses on understanding. Here is the introduction to section 15 (A Plea for the Ruy Lopez), as well as one of the model games.
Forward Chess is a good platform for Openings for Amateurs because all of the variations have been imported already, increasing efficiency over studying with a physical board. We normally sell Openings for Amateurs for $14.99, but with our 25% off coupon AMATEUR, you can buy it for only $11.25.
Pete Tamburro's Openings for Amateurs (Mongoose 2014) lives up to its billing as an excellent introduction to the openings for scholastic and club players. They just don't write books like this anymore -- ones that give good general advice on the openings and explore a variety of lines for advanced beginners and amateurs to play and learn from, with discussion they can quickly grasp and use. - Michael Goeller (2094 USCF).
