Unorthodox Openings 1987 Joel Benjamin+Eric Schiller  Lichess Studies
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Unorthodox Openings 1987 Joel Benjamin+Eric Schiller Lichess Studies

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I bought a copy of Unorthodox Openings by Joel Benjamin and Eric Schiller (1987) back in March of last year. My goal since earlier this year has been to turn the whole book into Lichess Studies. This edition of the book is fairly small, at only around 150 pages. So far, I have completed "The Good" and "The Bad" sections. Feel free to check them out.

https://lichess.org/study/nFaAZOPI - The Good: Openings they consider playable at tournament level.

https://lichess.org/study/PWpSJmwb - The Bad: Openings that they don't consider playable.

There are two more sections of this book left:
The Ugly: Openings that are playable but give away the opening advantage that is commonly associated with playing white and entail a certain degree of risk for the black players.
The Twilight Zone: Openings that don't fit in the Good-Bad-Ugly scheme Most they consider playable for certain types of players and not recommended for others.

The Good section has, I think, 58 openings, with examples of games, etc. The Bad has about 42 openings, with some example games. Most of the commentation is from the book, but I've added some of my own, mainly pointing out Stockfish's suggestions in certain positions and pointing out where the book claims one thing while Stockfish says something else, etc.

The Ugly section is the largest with the most openings (73 if I counted correctly), and I will have to split that into two studies when I get to it. (Lichess studies have a limit of 64 chapters.)

I recently bought the newer book Unorthodox Chess Openings (1998). There seems to be a third book that was released in 2002/2003 with the same title. I'm not sure if it's just a re-release of the 98 version or if there is anything new in it. They have different ISBNs, so I'm not 100% sure. All I know is that the 98 version has some 1200 openings covered in it. I don't know if I'll try and make studies covering the new book, as that would be massive.

Flipping through, it's funny that some of the openings he praised a bit in the 1987 book he is dismissive of in the 98 book because he lost using them. (The Tayler Opening is the main one I noticed.) It's in the Good section in the 1987 edition, and then in the 98 book he says he hasn't used the opening since 1987 because he lost a game when playing it, calling the game a debacle. (Stockfish says it's a fine, slight advantage to black (-0.1 on high depths), and as exhibited in one of @vitualis quick wins videos recently, it can be devestating if Black isn't careful.