Rating: 
Summary: The best one-volume openings reference book
Review: An amazing reference book for the openings. It shows you all the best lines for almost every single opening. It also has a nice table of contents in the beginning which points you to the opening you need within seconds. Covers all the main variations of the openings too. If you have never seen a reference book, it's just pages and pages of tables with little footnotes explaining certain moves and other possible variations. All the moves are also computer checked for accuracy. What you do with one of these books is play a game like you normally would, and then after the game you check your opening by the way the book went. Then you mentally record your mistakes and you will greatly improve. This can also teach you a new opening, if you like memorizing lines of play. But I would not recommend that. This is the best one volume openings reference book. What I like about this one is that it gives a little background information for all the major openings. This is great for someone who just likes to know everything about chess, especially the opening they use. By the way, its also in algebraic notation, which is a plus. Although all this good stuff comes at a price. This will help however, as long as you use it right. PROS:
Many Openings and Variations
Good Binding
Nice History of Openings
Algebraic Notation CONS:
Won't Really Teach You Openings
Takes Some Time to Learn How to Read the Tables
Just A Reference Book Summary: The best One-Volume openings reference book you can buy, well if you can afford it.
Rating: 
Summary: "The Bible" for more advanced players
Review: Are you an intermediate player looking to get better? This is known as "the Bible." Playing chess, you can get in trouble in the opening if you make poor moves. This defines and evaluates various openings in chess. If you buy a book on openings, buy this one because it is the most complete. Learn many lines to popular openings such the Ruy Lopez, English Opening, French Defense, Sicilian Defense, Queen's Indian Defense, etc. This is not for beginners. You should know basic concepts of chess, and you will have to know/learn (it's pretty simple) algebraic notation.
Rating:
Summary: "The Bible" for more advanced players
Review: Are you an intermediate player looking to get better? This is known as "the Bible." Playing chess, you can get in trouble in the opening if you make poor moves. This defines and evaluates various openings in chess. If you buy a book on openings, buy this one because it is the most complete. Learn many lines to popular openings such the Ruy Lopez, English Opening, French Defense, Sicilian Defense, Queen's Indian Defense, etc. This is not for beginners. You should know basic concepts of chess, and you will have to know/learn (it's pretty simple) algebraic notation.
Rating: 
Summary: MCO-14
Review: Contrary to one of the reviews, this book does _not_ give every possible move for various openings; prior editions never have. I obviously use it as a reference source, and the little that I have read is irritating due to the typos. Page 504, column 4 of the Albin Counter Gambit gives 4.Nf3Nf3. It is impossible for two pieces to occupy the same square at the same time; Black's move should have read 4...Nc6. On the same page, footnote (f) has move 11. as"Fr2" There is no piece that begins with "F" and there's no square designated "r2." The proofreader must have been alseep or nonexistent before that page was printed. I certainly hope the rest of the book doesn't contain similar typos. If it does, then the book will be discarded and NCO purchased.
Rating:
Summary: If you're serious about chess, you need this book.
Review: Even in this age, where one could possibly study openings simplying by examining massive databases, there still is a need for a book that is relatively selective in parsing the vast data of chess opening theory. This book is called the chessplayer's bible, and it's easy to see why. For most intermediate players, this would be a better buy than a book on a specific opening. How in the world do I objectively analyze this book? There are two ways to study this book: 1) Examine lines you know 2) Examine lines you don't know. As an example of 1), the line 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nf3 Qb6 6.Bd3 cxd4 7.cxd4 Bd7 8.O-O Nxd4 9.Nxd4 Qxd4 10.Nc3 is only included as a footnote in this edition. (In the 13th edition, it was a main line.) 6. Bd3 is no longer considered a main move; 6. Be2 and 6.a3 are. As for 2), this can be done by playing any game from a recent tournament, and seeing what your opening book says about it. (An interesting excerise by itself.) In this regard, I find that NCO has more ideas than MCO. This may be expected as NCO has more information crammed into fewer pages. (The layout of MCO is easier on the eye than the layout of NCO.) If I had to buy only one book, I would buy MCO, despite its lack of depth as compared to MCO, due to its more verbose descriptions and less cluttered layout.
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Summary: MCO -- One of two great opening REFERENCES
Review: First and foremost, this book is a reference. If you are hoping to learn openings from MCO, I fear you will be disappointed. While there are some very broad descriptions of openings, they do not have the detail needed to understand the book. If you have the idea of learning openings by rote, I think you are making a mistake, and should concentrate on the ideas of the openings, and perhaps purchase Chris Ward's Improve your opening play and Reubin Fine's The Ideas Behind the Chess Openings. That said, I find MCO to be a very thorough reference. If you lost a game due to a poor opening, you can look the opening up in MCO, see where you went wrong and what the primary acceptable moves are. With the caveots mentioned above, I think this is an excellent reference book.
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Summary: Get it and prepare to avoid opening surprises...
Review: For almost half of a century, this book "Modern Chess Openings" is the bible for players in the U.S. Only the rare book of Horowitz, "Chess Openings: Theory and Practice" is more authoritative. The edition I have is the 12th one, by Walter Korn. It is divided into four chapters: King Pawn Opening, Queen Pawn Opening, Indian Defense and Flank Opening.
The King Pawn chapter has all known openings but the most covered are the three about Ruy Lopez, French and Sicilian. Even the less known Two Knight Defense also gave me much trouble when my opponents use it. This book is helpful when I need to come back and study. And how about the Evan Gambit where Kasparov used successfully against some GMs? About the Queen Pawn Openings, if we recall 32 out of 34 games in the famous Alekhine-Capablanca match used it. Then Botvinnik used Dutch and Slav; Kasparov, Catalan; Fischer, Benoni; etc. They are all here. The Indian Defense is a derivative from the Queen Pawn Opening, however it evolves so much and becomes so important that it starts another category. The last section is for any openings where White does not start with either King or Queen Pawn. And the English and Bird are Sicilian and Dutch with one extra move in hand. And the Reti's can transpose to almost anything.
This book is important for who wants to prepare for tournaments. It is a collective effort of many contributors. If I could understand and memorize 10% of all the important lines in the book, I would be in good shape for any tournament.
I looked in Borders/Amazon site for where to insert this review, for my edition is 12th. edition. Here I only found Walter Korn, editions: 9th, 11th, and 13th. Now, that's really odds [;-)]. So I chose to put this review here. Either I use to my 12th edition or something about the 14th ed. by De Firmian, but his book does not look as impressive as Korn 12th edition. Maybe there is too much blank space in the pages of the 14th ed. Just a cosmetic factor. I know the De Firmian's is more up-to-date and more materials.
Rating: 
Summary: Strange book !
Review: Hello and thank's for reading my first review :-) First of all, I have to admit that this book is ok, trying to cover houndreds of years of chess openings evolution into a single book. This is [I think] impossible. The book itself could be a digital computer chess engine book reference, and not sold as a book itself. Even the free chess engines, provide more or less the same things cpncerning the book openings. The second reason for disapprove is that this book has just plain opening moves, without covering any ideas about middlegame play, besides the one page introduction at every chapter. My third and last reason for disapproval is that i got tired by the way lines are presented, [ok this is really personal issue], but I got really tired trying to learn a long line. I guess the excuse is that you can't fit all the stuff I wanted in a single book, but then why to buy this one? Oh and by the way some lines are not covered extensively [ at the english game for example many (main?) lines are missing :-( ] So my advise for everyone thinking to buy an all in one book for openings is NO WAY! Choose some openings you want to play and buy a specific book for this opening. Maybe I would buy an all in one book IF 1) had many diagrams 2)had instructions and ideas for middlegame play 3)had a better schema/presentations 4)Covered larger portions of chess openings theory. All of the above are conflicting with the idea all in one book so I find it rather difficult to buy one ;-) This is 100% my free and personal opinion. I hope I helped everyone intrested, and excuse my (bad?)english. Have a nice day
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Summary: Good reference for kids who are into chess
Review: I bought this book for my 12 year-old son, and he uses it on ICC as a way to practice. It's great for helping kids recognize openings and there's just enough detail to get them into trouble--which is what they seem to learn from best.
Most kids seem to play chess much more visually than intellectually, and this book is a fantastic way for them to identify and start using a whole host of openings and variations. I agree with comments of other reviewers about the need for more explanation, but this book has a definite and respected place on our chess bookshelf.
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Summary: Modern Chess Openings: McO-14 by De Firmian
Review: I just ordered this book because it is a great book for almost any chess player but maybe more for the serious player. I borrowed a friends copy of this book and it was so good as a reference while I play chess (vs human or computer opponents) that I had to get a copy for myself. It worked for me right from the first game I used it as a reference. I am now able to get past the opening phase of a game vs strong opponents (ie. rated 2000+) in pretty good shape but lose it in the middle or endgame. Now I can start working on my middle game so I can one day compete with the strong players/computers. I have been trying to find a book with this info for some time so if your stuck on trying to improve your opening play you need this book to get you over the top. It has a huge amount of details for just about any opening I have ever seen. Caution to the novice: this book can be a little hard to read if you don't have the proper knowledge and experience of a serious chess player.
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