FCO: Fundamental Chess Openings Paperback – Illustrated, November 24, 2009

Without a doubt this is the best opening book to start with, and possibly the only one you might need for quite a while. Oh how I wish this had been available when I started out. What's the first thing a beginner does (ignoring all advice)? He starts surveying all the openings to find a few that he likes (and then changes his mind repeatedly). Before this book that involved buying a book on each opening, at great expense, both of money and time. That's no longer necessary - you can buy this one and get all you need for that purpose. It does expect some experience, but no more than any opening book does.The book reminds me alot of Watson's Mastering the Chess Openings, except that it's much broader and less deep. It's far less selective and sophisticated than Watson, but it's not superficial at all given the target audience. It gives very good explanations of the general themes, historical development, and early move orders of pretty much every opening you could want, although it does have a strong focus on mainlines. For a beginner or intermediate, this book will give you enough theory to get started - your first half dozen moves with some deviations - but not enough to distract you from tactics and endgames. Coaches should love it. I'm sure they would tell you it's all you need until you are an expert.The book is targeted at non-Masters. It's perfect for beginners to intermediates - I would say this is an essential book for beginner to Class C. Higher class players would still get a lot of value as a reference for unfamiliar openings they encounter and for broadening their repertoires, but I suspect an Expert would get diminished value from it. It has 450 some pages of large page size and has a huge amount of prose for each bit of analysis.I bought this expecting to be disappointed by superficiality, but I was wrong. After the fact, it's hard to imagine this book hasn't existed until now. Thank you Grandmaster van der Sterren. Thank you Gambit.Update: I find myself immersed in this thing all the time - it's addictive. I defy anybody in the target audience to read about their favorite opening and not learn something.

This is a good overview: very recommended. My opening books include MCO-13, NCO, this book, and John Watson's four-volume set. Reading them side by side, and jumping back and forth between them, is giving me almost everything I need. (Occasionally I do internet searches for opening names, just to find out exactly which move is the cut-off for that name, for the books sometimes disagree about that, and about which line is truly the main line.)My only real complaint with FCO is the section labeling inside the chapters. The writer goes down an opening line, talking about possible sequences, then he'll jump part way back up the tree and label the next section "4 ... Bd3". But it takes a while to figure out exactly which tree of moves he's currently using (e.g., which white move 4 that he has previously discussed corresponds with the 4 ... Bd3 he is now discussing). The writer could've easily just included the earlier moves, and he could've used some more descriptive sub-titles other than "4 ... Bd3".

It really gets 4.5 stars.This is a nice primer to all the openings, without going deep into all the variation and theories. This shouldn't be a surprise: there are so many openings, and even more variations and sub-variations to each, that it would take well over a thousand pages to cover it all in detail. This is not the intention of this book. Rather, the goal is to introduce each opening, with main variations lines to each, and supplement it with basic explanatory prose. On this score, the book achieves what it sets out to do.The strong points of this book are primarily its prose and its organization. The prose is excellent. The author provides a nice mini history of each opening, in addition to a few sentences on the theory. He then gives main variations that are typically played, and explores each one, with a few sub-variations. Occasionally, he mentions the development of the opening variations through the years, who popularized them, who refuted them, who famously played them and etc. The prose is also sparkled here and there with some dry humor and witty commentary, which give this book a particular flavor (i.e. "this move is meant to make a knight on e2 look silly"; etc.).The other strong point of the book is its exceptional organization. It is easy to follow all the variations and sub-variations given, because the book is nicely organized to keep the reader focused and without going into long and distracting lines of analysis. All the main variation and sub-variation lines that the author highlights are in bold and the few variants of variations/sub-variations are in normal font.The weaker points of the book, IMO, are that the author doesn't often mention (though sometimes he does) the common traps that exist in the openings. And I also wish that more theoretical grounding was provided for the openings and its variations. To be sure, the author usually mentions a few sentences about the strengths and weaknesses of the openings, but never going much under the surface. Of course, great depth is not expected in a survey book of this sort; but some depth coverage would have been nice.This book is geared toward intermediate players, and perhaps as a refresher course to more advanced players. It would have no use for more seasoned masters of the game, and might be a little advanced for the early beginners.In conclusion, it's a solid primer for all the openings and provides a good introduction to each, thus serving as a starting point for further and deeper exploration of each particular opening and/or variation.

I bought this over MCO because the author does a fantastic job explaining the ideas behind any openings and its most relevant lines (not necessarily most played). I'm 1700-1800 in longer format games (much lower in blitz) and I can recognize and name dozens of openings, but only play 2-3 openings per color. I wanted a singular resource to both familiarize with other options and also start drilling deeper into the lines I'm already playing. This fulfills both those needs until I settle on an opening to study deeply. Good for players who know several opening branches to 7-15 moves.

Excellent explanation of openings on a basic level.