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Rating: 
Summary: Blackmar-Diemer Keybook II
Review: I bought the second edition of the Keybook. It has a lot of interesting games, but, like Mr. Ted Ichino of California wrote, its main problem is that it does not address the issue of playing against the Benoni, French, Pirc, or Caro-Kann (i.e. the BDG Avoided). For this reason I give this book four stars. It has many of my games included, such as the Zilbermints Gambit in the Euwe Defense to the BDG (5...e6 6 Bg5 Be7 7 Bd3 Nc6 8 OO! Nxd4 9 Kh1!), and my recommendations against the Bogoljubow Defense. I am disappointed, however, by the games Drueke-Sawyer and Sawyer-Just not being analysed deep enough. Both games are critical to understanding my gambit against the 7...Nc6 variation in the Euwe Defense. For example, in the Drueke-Sawyer game, 12 Bh4 instead of 12 Qh4?! would have been OK for White. And in the Sawyer-Just game, instead of 13 Ne5? , White should have played 13 Bb5! But overall, even with typos, this is an excellent book. If you wish to learn the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, I strongly recommend you buy it. Buy the first edition (1992) too -- it has some great stuff the second one does not -- and use both to learn the BDG. Good luck!!
Rating: 
Summary: A bit of a rebuttal
Review: I am a devotee of this opening. I have played it hundreds of times with excellent results. Two years ago I was a 1500 player who started studying tactics extensively and adopted an almost all gambit repertoire. Now my rating is usually 2000-2050. I owe a lot of the improvement to this opening. First, let me say that the book is quite adequately reviewed by Electra 10, Zilbermints and Ichino. To the extent that they have minor disagreements, I agree with Electra 10. I am writing this review to point out what I believe are errors, both objective and subjective, by the Chessgeek review. Chessgeek says the Teichman Defense (1 d4 d5 2 e4 dxe4 3 Nc3 Nf6 4 f3 exf3 5 Nxf3 Bg4) is best. The author's database statistics dispute that showing it scoring only 32% and a couple of the other defenses doing somewhat better. He then gives the continuation 6. h3 Bxf3 7. Qxf3 c6 8. Bd3 Qb6 with the idea of castling Queenside as a winning plan for Black. Unfortunately there is no such variation in this book, or anything close to it. The move 8. Bd3? is mentioned only once in a footnote (the "?" because it allows ...Qxd4). The mainline moves at move 8 are: Be3, g4, or Qf2. I thought maybe his 8. Bd3 was a typo and he meant the aforementioned "old" mainline move, 8. Be3, there are four 8. Be3 Qb6 move order games referred to in the book and White wins 3 of them and should have won the fourth as he blundered in a nearly won postion. His suggested line is not in my Blackmar-Diemer Gambit Mega CD that has about 15,000 BDG games. It is also not in the first Keybook either. Then Chessgeek mentions that you can play 1. d4 d5 2. e4 dxe4 3. Nc3 e5 with "...easy equality." This is the so-called Lemberger Counter Gambit. In my BDG database White's "old" move 4. Nxe4 is scoring 61% with a +128 performance rating! Hardly "easy equality." Sawyer advocates the "new" move, i.e., 4 Nge2, which statistically is performing nearly as well as 4. Nxe4. Moving on to the subjective, Chessgeek feels that White is under pressure and must play with great precision because he is a pawn down whereas Black can equalize and maybe win just by playing commonsense moves. As this author and other BDG authors have pointed out, the White position becomes so menacing that the pressure on Black is intense and often he has only one possible saving move (and often not a very obvious one at that)whereas White often has the luxury of several attacking plans. This mirrors my own experience playing this opening. Even though I know the system reasonably well, I have very few wins as Black. This is one opening that you can truly reap benefits by studying the main systems and attacking motifs presented in this book since you will have the opportunity to play a BDG every time Black answers l d4 with d5 and most of the time when he responds Nf6. It can be a lot of fun and can greatly simplify your opening system.
Rating:
Summary: A bit of a rebuttal
Review: I am a devotee of this opening. I have played it hundreds of times with excellent results. Two years ago I was a 1500 player who started studying tactics extensively and adopted an almost all gambit repertoire. Now my rating is usually 2000-2050. I owe a lot of the improvement to this opening. First, let me say that the book is quite adequately reviewed by Electra 10, Zilbermints and Ichino. To the extent that they have minor disagreements, I agree with Electra 10. I am writing this review to point out what I believe are errors, both objective and subjective, by the Chessgeek review. Chessgeek says the Teichman Defense (1 d4 d5 2 e4 dxe4 3 Nc3 Nf6 4 f3 exf3 5 Nxf3 Bg4) is best. The author's database statistics dispute that showing it scoring only 32% and a couple of the other defenses doing somewhat better. He then gives the continuation 6. h3 Bxf3 7. Qxf3 c6 8. Bd3 Qb6 with the idea of castling Queenside as a winning plan for Black. Unfortunately there is no such variation in this book, or anything close to it. The move 8. Bd3? is mentioned only once in a footnote (the "?" because it allows ...Qxd4). The mainline moves at move 8 are: Be3, g4, or Qf2. I thought maybe his 8. Bd3 was a typo and he meant the aforementioned "old" mainline move, 8. Be3, there are four 8. Be3 Qb6 move order games referred to in the book and White wins 3 of them and should have won the fourth as he blundered in a nearly won postion. His suggested line is not in my Blackmar-Diemer Gambit Mega CD that has about 15,000 BDG games. It is also not in the first Keybook either. Then Chessgeek mentions that you can play 1. d4 d5 2. e4 dxe4 3. Nc3 e5 with "...easy equality." This is the so-called Lemberger Counter Gambit. In my BDG database White's "old" move 4. Nxe4 is scoring 61% with a +128 performance rating! Hardly "easy equality." Sawyer advocates the "new" move, i.e., 4 Nge2, which statistically is performing nearly as well as 4. Nxe4. Moving on to the subjective, Chessgeek feels that White is under pressure and must play with great precision because he is a pawn down whereas Black can equalize and maybe win just by playing commonsense moves. As this author and other BDG authors have pointed out, the White position becomes so menacing that the pressure on Black is intense and often he has only one possible saving move (and often not a very obvious one at that)whereas White often has the luxury of several attacking plans. This mirrors my own experience playing this opening. Even though I know the system reasonably well, I have very few wins as Black. This is one opening that you can truly reap benefits by studying the main systems and attacking motifs presented in this book since you will have the opportunity to play a BDG every time Black answers l d4 with d5 and most of the time when he responds Nf6. It can be a lot of fun and can greatly simplify your opening system.
Rating:
Summary: Blackmar-Diemer Keybook II
Review: I bought the second edition of the Keybook. It has a lot of interesting games, but, like Mr. Ted Ichino of California wrote, its main problem is that it does not address the issue of playing against the Benoni, French, Pirc, or Caro-Kann (i.e. the BDG Avoided). For this reason I give this book four stars. It has many of my games included, such as the Zilbermints Gambit in the Euwe Defense to the BDG (5...e6 6 Bg5 Be7 7 Bd3 Nc6 8 OO! Nxd4 9 Kh1!), and my recommendations against the Bogoljubow Defense. I am disappointed, however, by the games Drueke-Sawyer and Sawyer-Just not being analysed deep enough. Both games are critical to understanding my gambit against the 7...Nc6 variation in the Euwe Defense. For example, in the Drueke-Sawyer game, 12 Bh4 instead of 12 Qh4?! would have been OK for White. And in the Sawyer-Just game, instead of 13 Ne5? , White should have played 13 Bb5! But overall, even with typos, this is an excellent book. If you wish to learn the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, I strongly recommend you buy it. Buy the first edition (1992) too -- it has some great stuff the second one does not -- and use both to learn the BDG. Good luck!!
Rating:
Summary: Great choice of opening to improve
Review: If you are a begginer or intermediate player you can probably reap great benefits from playing this opening. When I started using it my USCF rating was 1500, and a few months later it was 1800. I have realized though that when you start facing stronger opponents (2000 and over) it is difficult to obtain enough compensation for the pawn. I have had trouble mostly with the variation 1.d4 d5 2.e4 dxe4 3.Nc3 e5!? and also with some lines of the Bogoljubov defense (5...g6 after accepting the gambit). Since I also started playing more correspondence chess I had to slowly move away from this opening and nowadays I only use it with players under 1800 or when I play blitz. Nevertheless, I know that playing this opening for a while helped me improve my tactics and attacking chess greatly!
Rating:
Summary: Great opening for the attacking player
Review: If you are a positional player who loves obscure maneuvering behind locked pawns, this book is not for you. If you are a GM or IM, you won't be reading this review. But for the rest of us class players, this is a great book. Chess is supposedly 99% tactics (Soltis would say 'calculation' rather than tactics) and the best and most fun way to learn how the pieces cooperate and coordinate is to play attacking chess. But you can spend months learning, say, the King's Gambit, and then never get a chance to play it in a world teeming with Sicilian, French, Caro-Kan and Modern defenses. By playing 1. e4, you are allowing Black to dictate which opening will be played. The beauty of the Blackmar-Diemer gambit is that (in my experience, at least) over 90% of the games are steered into a BDG or related system. If Black replies to 1. d4 with 1. ... d5, 2. e4 puts you directly into a BDG. If Black responds with 1 ... Nf6, you have a choice of transposing via the Veresov, 2. Nc3 or the Paleface Attack, 2. f3. Either approach will almost invariably land you in a BDG, so your study will not be wasted. I was a B-player when I bought the first edition of this book. After I read it, the only tournament game (40/90; G/1) I lost with it was to a master, who I later defeated with another BDG (I got lucky). I beat two experts and drew a B-player. The first edition has a lot of stuff that the newer edition leaves out, such as how to play against a Benoni, Pirc, and French, but the second edition has some great traps. The very first game in the book has a fantastic trap which I have sprung on four opponents in a few months; this stuff is usable! The downside is that this is a complex opening and is difficult to learn. On the bright side, you never get bored, since every game has a different complexion. If you are bored with cat-and-mouse positional maneuvering and want to slug it out toe-to-toe in the center of the ring, this book will show you how. The BDG is the only attacking opening I have been able to steer opponents into playing. There is a psychological shock value to it too--your opponent does not expect a Queen's Pawn player to start slugging it out with him. By all means, buy the book! It's a bit pricey, but has lots of useful information. Then read the Introductions and the general approach to the opening (which is clearly spelled out) and go out and play some Blitz chess. When you lose, as you frequently will in the beginning, then it is time to look up the variation in the Keybook, and it will be burned into your memory. There's nothing like an abject defeat to get your attention! A final comment. I find that an early Bd3 keeps me out of many unpleasant variations. Lasker's dictum, "Knights before Bishops" should really have been phrased "Play the Obvious before the Optional" Since the White Bishop belongs on d3, why not put it there before fooling around with other moves (assuming that you aren't hanging the d-pawn by putting it on d3). Be bold. Throw this opening at any opponent, regardless of rating. I guarantee that you will not be bored!
Rating:
Summary: The Best Blackmar-Diemer book ever
Review: If you play the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit (BDG) or want to, you need this book. The main line BDG starts like this: 1. d4 d5 2. e4 dxe4 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. f3 exf3 5. Nxf3 or l. d4 Nf6 2. Nc3 d5 3.e4 dxe4 4. f3 exf3 5. Nxf3. One thing that is really great about this gambit is that you get to play it a very high percentage of the time. Attempts at the French or Caro-Kan can be forced into the BDG (1.d4 d5 2. e4 e6 3. Be3 dxe4 4. Nd2 Nf6 5. f3 exf3 6. Nxf3 and 1. d4 d5 2. e4 c6 3. Nc3 dxe4 4. f3 exf3 5.Nxf3). This gambit is fun to play and I have found it to produce great results. I have played this gambit countless times on the internet and have scored many wins in under 20 moves. It can be exciting. This book contains over 2700 games in a well organized format. There is virtually everything you will need to play the BDG. All the normal defenses are covered as well as the attempts to avoid or decline the BDG. Sawyer has also produced the BDG gambit keybook in 1992 that has 700 games (100 games for each of 7 chapters). If you can find it, get it too. I believe the other reviewers' criticizing the book for not showing how to play against the Benoni, French, Pirc and Caro-Kan are misplaced. The French is covered in game 6. The Caro-Kan is covered in games 45-49 and 8 and 24. I don't think there can be a Benoni position because white doesn't play c4. The Pirc completely avoids the BDG so I don't think the author should be charged with covering it anymore than he should have to cover 1...f5, the Dutch Defense or 1...b6, the English defense. This is, after all, a book on the BDG and not a complete repertoire for 1 d4. Having said that though I do appreciate Reviewer Lev Zilbermints comments on Sawyer's treatment of the Zilbermints gambit. I have printed it out and put it in my book! Thanks. If you decide to play the BDG I suggest you also purchase Sawyer's "Alapin French." It is a small book (86 pages) with 50 annotated games and 220 other fragments or whole games included in the text. While The BDG Keybook II includes 30 or so Alapin French games in the text of Game 6, it is worth having the extra games and information. Kudos to Tim Sawyer for not including any of the games in his first BDG Keybook or his Alapin French (except for Game 6) in The BDG Keybook II. Finally, playing this opening is an ideal way to improve your tactics and attacking skills. You'll get to use them a lot!
Rating:
Summary: The Best Blackmar-Diemer book ever
Review: If you play the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit (BDG) or want to, you need this book. The main line BDG starts like this: 1. d4 d5 2. e4 dxe4 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. f3 exf3 5. Nxf3 or l. d4 Nf6 2. Nc3 d5 3.e4 dxe4 4. f3 exf3 5. Nxf3. One thing that is really great about this gambit is that you get to play it a very high percentage of the time. Attempts at the French or Caro-Kan can be forced into the BDG (1.d4 d5 2. e4 e6 3. Be3 dxe4 4. Nd2 Nf6 5. f3 exf3 6. Nxf3 and 1. d4 d5 2. e4 c6 3. Nc3 dxe4 4. f3 exf3 5.Nxf3). This gambit is fun to play and I have found it to produce great results. I have played this gambit countless times on the internet and have scored many wins in under 20 moves. It can be exciting. This book contains over 2700 games in a well organized format. There is virtually everything you will need to play the BDG. All the normal defenses are covered as well as the attempts to avoid or decline the BDG. Sawyer has also produced the BDG gambit keybook in 1992 that has 700 games (100 games for each of 7 chapters). If you can find it, get it too. I believe the other reviewers' criticizing the book for not showing how to play against the Benoni, French, Pirc and Caro-Kan are misplaced. The French is covered in game 6. The Caro-Kan is covered in games 45-49 and 8 and 24. I don't think there can be a Benoni position because white doesn't play c4. The Pirc completely avoids the BDG so I don't think the author should be charged with covering it anymore than he should have to cover 1...f5, the Dutch Defense or 1...b6, the English defense. This is, after all, a book on the BDG and not a complete repertoire for 1 d4. Having said that though I do appreciate Reviewer Lev Zilbermints comments on Sawyer's treatment of the Zilbermints gambit. I have printed it out and put it in my book! Thanks. If you decide to play the BDG I suggest you also purchase Sawyer's "Alapin French." It is a small book (86 pages) with 50 annotated games and 220 other fragments or whole games included in the text. While The BDG Keybook II includes 30 or so Alapin French games in the text of Game 6, it is worth having the extra games and information. Kudos to Tim Sawyer for not including any of the games in his first BDG Keybook or his Alapin French (except for Game 6) in The BDG Keybook II. Finally, playing this opening is an ideal way to improve your tactics and attacking skills. You'll get to use them a lot!
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: This is a beautiful and uniquely done chess book. Compared to the other reviewers, I would only say that the BDG is a little harder to play than you would think. White must play with great precision, since he is a pawn down, whereas black can normally at least equalize, and perhaps win, by playing common sense moves. This puts a big psychological and actual burden on you as white, and often I have wondered why I have done this to myself. You have to attack in the BDG to win, and you know in your heart that on a logical level you are not really justified in attacking from the start (Steinitz). Most wins by white occur because black does not know the system. The fact is that if black castles king-side in the BDG, he will be smoked by anyone who knows the system well as white. Thus, the best answer to the BDG is the Teichmann system (1. d4 d5, 2. e4 dxe4, 3. Nc3 Nf6, 4. f3 exf3, 5. Nxf3 Bg4! 6. h3 Bxf3, 7. Qxf3 c6, 8. Bd3 Qb6!, followed by CASTLING QUEENSIDE). Even the book itself rates black as having a plus in this line of the Teichmann. The assumption is that most people won't know it as black. Once you castle queenside against the BDG, you are much more comfortable and will have better chances than white. Alternatively, black can simply play 3... e5 and has easy equality, avoiding the BDG. The book itself is brilliant, with tons of games packed within the annotated main games. Also, it is wonderfully produced.
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