:Horowitz's books openings

I hate descriptive notation. Yet I have seen time and time again two of Horowitz's books praised.

One is How to Win the Chess Openings and the other is Chess Openings: Theory and Practice.

Do any of you have either of these books, and how do they compare to other chess opening books (not specific openings, but overall) ?

stwils

Ive got HTWIT Chess Openings. A bit of an antique considering it was published in 1951 so they openings information is not up to date. But for those of us who are not Expert or Master rated chess players I think there's plenty of meat in the book to help us. I particularly like the way the book uses annotated games as its approach.

Descriptive notation is a bit confusing for those who didn't grow up with it but I find it fun to use and quite intuitive. Gives me that old timey feel. Given that algebraic notation was well known, and in use for quite some time in places like Germany before the rest of the chess world caught on, I'm guessing there might be more to descriptive notation than meets the eye.

Chess Openings Theory and Practice is a massive book that is a lot like ECO (or BCO) columns of chess moves though he does have quite a few complete illustrative games. While a good source I think it is a little dated.

My favorite Horowitz book is How to Think Ahead in Chess which teaches the Stonewall Attack and the Dragon. There are plenty of good basic opening books today that are in Algebraic and are not as dated.

Thanks to both of you.

So what other general opening books would you recommend for a beginner plus (rating 996)? I saw on Amazon The Complete Idiot's Guide to Chess Openings. How is that?

stwils

Heya  stwils, I'd not get into Opening Encyclopedias (which CO:T&P is) at your level. Hammer away at the opening principles, applying them in your games, until you feel confident that you are understanding what the opponent is aiming at in the opening and that you can come up with a reasonble response. There will be tactical shots that get missed but that's something else--keep working on both tactics and opening principles.

If you want to look up moves for your openings that's okay too. Such as a position in a game you played and feel you got off track early on. But studying lists of moves or memorizing many opening variations is putting the cart before the horse at this stage though, which is how players usually use books filled with columns of moves.

You've probably heard that a few times before now. So do you have a course of action you feel set on?