All the lines presented in this book are very old, some even dating back to medieval

times! Lots of things were known about these systems before chess engines started

to become very strong, but now we have completely new ideas from not only a

tactical, but also positional, point of view on positions that have simply resurfaced

in recent times. The rebirth of these lines has become so popular that during my

work on this book I was amazed to see such a level of popularity.

To make this book readable we broke some positions into smaller files wherever we

could. In all our opening books we tried to present at least the basics of many openings and lines:

the problem is that basic knowledge about openings is growing even bigger, and it

is not an easy job to comprehend and assimilate all that material. That’s why we have

also tried in this book to be as concise as possible. After all, reading a book should

not only be an aesthetic/interesting endeavor, but also a practical/useful thing at

the same time.