Modern Chess Openings (Mckay Chess Library)

Rating:
Summary: A CHESS GUIDE!
Review: A full chess openings book. Everything you want to study about chess openings you can find in it. It is resumed and it's not complex. Good and easy to read!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent reference
Review: As a beginning player, (ICC standard rating around 1300), I find MCO to be extremely useful to familiarize myself quickly with the correct responses to virtually any opening. At my level, my opponents quickly leave the book; but up to the point they do, at least I'm not the first one to make a mistake. If one wants to quickly get familiar with an opening without studying it in great depth, MCO works. I'm sure it's useful to better players also; but I'm just commenting from a beginners point of view.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent reference
Review: As a beginning player, (ICC standard rating around 1300), I find MCO to be extremely useful to familiarize myself quickly with the correct responses to virtually any opening. At my level, my opponents quickly leave the book; but up to the point they do, at least I'm not the first one to make a mistake. If one wants to quickly get familiar with an opening without studying it in great depth, MCO works. I'm sure it's useful to better players also; but I'm just commenting from a beginners point of view.

Rating:
Summary: Required Equipment
Review: The Chess-Player's mandatory reference work. If you are a postal player, or aspire to be a good player one day, this book absolutely, positively belongs on your shelf.

You don't think careful study of the opening's will improve your game? Look at the author. (Nick DeFirmian.) Right after he finished this book, he won the U.S. Championship. 'Nuff Said!

Rating:
Summary: Good, but BCO-2 is in some ways better.
Review: The newest references in MCO-13 are fom the 1980's and a lot of water has passed over the dam since then. If you must, buy this for its historic value. (Eric Schiller's otherwise fine Standard Chess Openings is not the answer for those looking for a single-volume reference. That book is an idea-based book illustrating opening themes rather than main theoretical lines. See my review under that title.)