My First Chess Opening Repertoire for Black: A Ready-to-go Package for Ambitious Beginners by Vincent Moret

Every chess player needs to decide which openings he is going to play. But where do you start?

The risk of drowning in the turbulent sea of opening theory is only too real for beginning amateurs.

Often your goals and ambitions will be misguided. If you are trying to win in 20 moves, copy what’s in fashion among top-GM’s or memorize variations, you are wasting your time. Most likely you will never get to play your ‘preparation’ and end up aimlessly switching from one opening to the other.

Experienced French chess trainer Vincent Moret provides a complete, ready-to-go chess opening repertoire for Black with a sound set of lines that do not outdate rapidly, do not require memorization and are easy to digest for beginners and post-beginners.

Moret uses games of young, improving players to highlight the errors they tend to make.

Vincent Moret (1968) has been teaching chess and training talented youngsters for more than 20 years. Many of his pupils have won important prizes and some have become Masters and Grandmasters.

Sean Marsh, CHESS magazine (UK):
“There are lots of prose explanations and the analytical lines are just long enough to be instructive without running the risk of losing the reader’s attention (..) Moret’s humour shines through at various moments, but it is never overcooked (..) This book succeeds every bit as well as the first volume. I would expect the recommended lines to grow in popularity at club level and they would make an excellent surprise weapon in tournament play too.”

Praise for My First Chess Opening Repertoire for White

IM Jeremy Silman, Chess.com:
"This book is filled with exciting, tactical lines. While these won’t fool strong players, they will often wipe the beginner opponent off the board. What I like about this book is his copious prose, which gives the reader the history of the moves and the ideas and tactics."

Sean Marsh, CHESS Magazine (UK):
"A relatively easy to learn yet reasonably sharp set of lines which could certainly be effective at club level. Time and space are also spent on explaining key middlegame ideas and structures and I found these explanations to be clear and concise."

Sean Marsh, CHESS magazine (UK):
“There are lots of prose explanations and the analytical lines are just long enough to be instructive without running the risk of losing the reader’s attention (..) Moret’s humour shines through at various moments, but it is never overcooked (..) This book succeeds every bit as well as the first volume. I would expect the recommended lines to grow in popularity at club level and they would make an excellent surprise weapon in tournament play too.”

B.H.Wilders, Nederlands Dagblad:
“For ambitious beginners who don’t have time to learn many complicated variations and who wish to have a couple of good openings in their repertoire (..) A nice book by this knowledgeable trainer, with lots of exercises.”

Henk Prins, Schaaksite.nl:
“Moret doesn’t select openings that are endlessly played by GM’s. He takes the unknown roads (..) He also describes the ideas behind the opening, so players learn to understand.”

Praise for My First Chess Opening Repertoire for White

IM Jeremy Silman, Chess.com:
"This book is filled with exciting, tactical lines. While these won’t fool strong players, they will often wipe the beginner opponent off the board. What I like about this book is his copious prose, which gives the reader the history of the moves and the ideas and tactics."

Sean Marsh, CHESS Magazine (UK):
"A relatively easy to learn yet reasonably sharp set of lines which could certainly be effective at club level. Time and space are also spent on explaining key middlegame ideas and structures and I found these explanations to be clear and concise."