Anyone Read this Book?

I play almost exclusively the Italian game as white vs 1...e5 and I was wondering about this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Italian-Game-Evans-Gambit-Pinski/dp/185744373X

Any thoughts or other suggestions?

EDIT: Also, what are some thoughts on this- http://franosch.org/chess/italian.pdf

Nope I'm reading the Alphabet of Manliness.

Is that some sort of trolling?  Lets avoid the useless posts or put them in the Off Topic forum.

exter chess club has a lot of great resources. i've read through that document and i thought it was great.

i haven't read that book though, but if you do end up getting it i'd like to hear your thoughts on it.

An in-depth review:

http://www.chessville.com/reviews/ItalianGameandEvansGambit.htm

p.s. I own "Open Gambits" by George Botterill and find it well written, it's quite old now so you should be able to pick it up for a song.

great review.

Thank you PawnEatsPawn, I'm finding that very helpful, I'll have to pick up reading it later but I appreciate the link.

I actually have that book, because I play the Italian as white, but I haven't read it. I just skim the lines I'm interested in, usually comparing what's in the book to what came up in one of my games during post mortem.

First off, I'll point out that the book does NOT cover the Two Knights Defense. Pinski has another book on that. What it does cover is pretty much everything else beginning with 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4, including the Giuoco Piano (3. ... Bc5), Evans Gambit (3. ... Bc5 4. b4!?), Hungarian Defense (3. ... Be7), and I think there were one or two other oddball lines like 3. ... h6 mentioned briefly. It does not cover variations before that point (ie 2. ... d6, 2. ... Nf6, etc).

The author seems to be firmly of the opinion that white's best try for an advantage after 3. Bc4 Bc5 is the Evans Gambit (4. b4). Thus, the gambit takes up half the book. He doesn't seem to think too highly of the line I play (4. c3 Nf6 5. d4 exd4 6. e5), claiming that it leads to easy equality for black. I like that line because it requires less memorization than the Evans or typical Moeller Attack (6. cxd4). I also play the Two Knights the same way (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. d4 exd4 5. e5), so I get a lot of similar positions in both. At my level, having an easy to understand position is more important than having a slight theoretical edge that's tough to take advantage of.

But I bought this book because I keep saying that one of these days, I want to try out the Evans Gambit. I just haven't gotten around to it. As I said, half the book is dedicated to the gambit. When I eventually get around to reading it and trying out the gambit, it should be fun to try it.

--Fromper

evan's gambit is great. very fun to play.

I also have the book and have used it a little for reference but have not read it. I use the old Batsford books on the Italian and Scotch (as it covers the Scotch gambit) and have found them very useful and though old still excellent. I also use Estrin's book on the Two Knights which is quite good.