Secrets of Opening Surprises Vol.7

(March 2008) 'Secrets of Opening Surprises Vol.7' by IM Jeroen Bosch; New in Chess; 2007; 144 pages. • 'Brings you a wide variety of unusual opening ideas. They may seem outrageous at first sight, but have proven to be perfectly playable. An SOS deviates very early from the regular lines in a mainstream opening, usually even before move six! That is why it is so easy to actually bring the variation on the board.' [from the back cover] • Contains 47 games, well annotated using figurine algebraic notation.

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Disclaimer: 'Secrets of Opening Surprises Vol.7' (SOS7) is the only book in the SOS series that we have seen. Our comments might not apply to others in the series, including SOS8 (published early 2008), although every indication is that all books are similar. • The 'surprises' occur within the first 5-6 moves, thereby avoiding entire complexes of well trodden opening theory. Unusual moves in known opening variations, they are difficult to categorize. Some are waiting moves, some are slightly anti-positional, some are tactically complex. All are speculative. • Exactly half (8) of the 'surprises' are in 1.e4 openings. The rest (7) are mostly 1.d4 openings. The earliest game is from 1949, the latest from 2007. About 3/4 of the games were played in 1999 or later. • The 'surprises' do not all have equal value. The O'Kelly Variation, fitting nicely into a Black repertoire against 1.e4, would be useful in about half of the games where a player has Black. The surprise against the Bird (1.f4 Nh6) would hardly ever be useful because 1.f4 is rarely played. • The NIC site has full sample chapters from the SOS series (Adobe PDF format) including SOS7 Ch.5 'The Shirov Gambit versus the Philidor' (1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 e5 4.Nf3 Nbd7 5.g4). Another PDF document has the table of contents showing the position where each chapter starts. • Recommended for intermediate (or better) players who already know the basics of opening theory, who play in competition but have little time to study openings, and who are looking for offbeat opening ideas.