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Chessville
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The Caro-Kann: 3 f3!? Reviewed by Peter Dove This is a review of the e-book ‘The Caro-Kann: 3 f3!?’ The e-book was written by Polish International Master Jan Pinski & National Master Rafal Przedmojski. It is available from the Chess Café website. Having just spent an hour watching a very good video on the 3 f3 Caro-Kann I noticed on the Chess Café site that they had an e-book on the same topic and I ordered it straight away hoping for a more detailed insight into the opening. The ordering procedure was very smooth and I had the files within about 10 minutes. The only other thing I was required to do was download their free e-book reader, which also was easy to install. Within minutes of studying the e-book, which is presented in the same format as the Bookup software, I became aware of how little information there was going to be. The whole e-book is very skimpy on text, plans and explanations. If you were hoping to learn anything about the lines, other than pure learning by rote, you would be mistaken. But more than this, some of the actual recommendations of the e-book cannot be taken seriously. This e-book could not have taken more than one days work by anyone with access to Chessbase. A case in point to the lack of attention to detail, and the incorrect assessments made of certain lines, is shown below. In the line 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.f3 g6 4.Nc3 Nh6!?
the e-book recommends 5.Be3 in reply to Nh6!? and gives the move 5.Bf4 a "?!". Now after viewing the video on the Caro-Kann the grandmaster recommended Bf4 on the basis that after Be3 black can reply 5... de 6.fe Ng4 harassing the black bishop and then after white (if he wished to save the bishop) replies 7.Bf4 black can then play e5!
After 8.dxe Qa5 9.Qd2 Nd7 black has managed to equalise. One line in Fritz continues 10.Nf3 Bg7 and assesses the position as equal. So in order to avoid this line the GM recommended Bf4. In the two games I found in this line one was a draw between Timman and Lalic although instead of going for the draw on move 22 with Rf1 Fritz recommend Ng3 with a full pawn advantage. The other game white lost but this was nothing to do with the move Bf4. The worst thing of all is that the e-book continues the line (after Bf4) with the Timman-Lalic game and after move 22 says ‘Black has a good position’ which is incorrect. At this position Fritz is giving white a whole pawn advantage! Compounding this error, after recommending Be3 the e-book makes no mention as to what to do about 5. … de 6.fe Ng4 which show a real lack of understanding of what the move Nh6 is all about. Also the e-book promises a whole chapter with sample games. This is all well and good but viewing game collections in the Bookup format is a little painful. It is not meant as a viewer of database games, but more as a move tree and openings book. I would have preferred all the games in Chessbase or pgn format. In conclusion I do not think people should waste their money on this product. It lacks any depth in its analysis and some of the assessments are just plain wrong. One thing I did notice is that this series is called the ‘Quick Survey Series’. Perhaps one should change it to the ‘Very Quick Survey Series’. This lack of depth does not excuse the incorrect assessments of positions. There was no original analysis that I could find either, all taken from existing games whose results seemed to be accepted on face value. Save your money and find all the games you can on this line and buy the video from Foxy Openings ‘The Caro-Krusher’ – you will learn a lot more in one hours worth of video than your will from this e-book. The video also explain the ideas behind moves whereas the e-book does not.
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