What's your favourite opening book?
Everyone has a favourite chess book, and if you ask strong players they will probably mention Bronstein's book on Z?ɬºrich '53, the games collection of Tal or perhaps Fire on Board by Shirov. Today a small variation on this theme, because I suspect that many players also have a favourite opening book. An opening book that had a great influence on their play. To me that's Beating the Sicilian 2 by John Nunn. Nunn, who turns 52 today, doesn't write opening books anymore, as he told me in August last year. Sadly, because his books are great.Beating the Sicilian 2 (Batsford, 1990) was of course the successor to Beating the Sicilian (1984) but then I didn't play chess yet. (In 1995 Nunn wrote, together with Joe Gallagher, Beating the Sicilian 3. Now the book Experts vs. Sicilian by Quality Chess can be considered its successor.)I only started in 1990 and got a copy of BTS 2 about two years later. The book had great influence on my play. I still feel the most comfortable in Siciliaans-like positions where I'm White and have castled kingside. These are the positions in which I've beaten my strongest opponents (several IMs and also once GM Wojtkiewicz). The most instructional commentary I've ever seen in an opening book is Nunn's to the following game (I've left out may references to other games as well the commentary at the end of the game).>> open the game in a separate windowWhat's your favourite opening book? And why?
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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