Dutch Stonewall

Rating:
Summary: A Mess
Review: I am a tournament player (USCF 2136) who actually read somewhere that Aagaard was a good author, so one day I purchased several of his books. What a mistake! This book is hopelessly disorganized, cloudy, and all but useless.

I struggled with this book for several days trying to learn something about the Dutch Stonewall so I could play it in tournaments. For awhile I wondered if I had just gone dense or something. It gradually dawned on me that this guy's writing is sloppy, disorganized, and filled with clouds.

Moreover, Aagaard is too weak to be writing chess books for good players: you can see him on the Internet Chess Club losing Blitz games to lower-rated players with plenty of stupid moves, while the chatters laugh about what an inept author he is. They have a running joke that any incomprehensible chess book in English must have been ghost-authored by Aagaard. Remark: "I couldn't make any sense of that book!" Reply: "Maybe Aagaard was the ghostwriter." I understand that joke now. Aagaard makes Eric Schiller seem like a model of clarity; that's how bad he is.

Many of Aagaard's evaluations are questionable. When I sought enlightenment by looking up the games in CHESS INFORMANT, I was disgusted to find that he routinely repeats INFORMANT analysis with little change--and INFORMANT analysis is notorious for being dashed off in five minutes and served up to an uncritical public. Fritz routinely finds gaping holes in the rushed analysis that Aagaard idiotically reproduces in this book. Oh, and he tosses in some incomprehensible verbiage and some vague references that save him from charges of plagarism.

My advice is to forget all about buying any chess book by Aagaard. Save yourself headaches and frustration. Don't waste your money on his garbage.

Rating:
Summary: Focus on ideas --- Very well done
Review: I am an intermediate class chessplayer looking for a fairly easy opening to play as black against 1. d4. This book presents a viable defense for black. The focus is on ideas rather than memorizing reams of variations. The introduction section alone is worth the price of the book. This section presents the core ideas in this setup. The rest of the book deals with concrete variations. So if u dont want to memorize page after page of informator symbol headache, get this book.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: This book tells you everything you will need to know about the Stonewall. It also has a huge collection of games where the Stonewall is used. I highly recommend this book to anybody who needs a defence against 1 d4.

Rating:
Summary: Well worth the price
Review: This is a great book. A number of opening books fall into one of two categories:
1. Excessive numbers of variations to learn, with little explanatory information.
2. Insufficient variations, so that one will frequently encounter over the board situations not given in the book.

This book avoids both of these shortcomings. It gives a reasonably large number of variations - anything worthwhile/likely to be played by white, AND detailed explanations regarding the strategies behind the moves. The variations are all supported by games of leading players. The book is well written and easy to read.

Importantly, it clearly points out some of the pitfalls to be aware of in playing this opening.

It also provides brief but insightful annotations to a large number of complete games, adding value beyond simply opening theory.

Thoroughly recommended.