Play the London System (Everyman Chess Series) [Paperback]

I have to say I agree with the first reviewer from Arizona who made some excellent comments. I play the London pretty much exclusively as White and it can be used against anything Black throws at you. Most players as Black, even higher rated ones (such as an IM I drew with it) hate facing the London. As others have said, it will not necessarily give you a major advantage against a strong player, but it's hard for Black to develop any major counterplay against it. Agressive Black players will get frustrated and impatient and ultimately make a mistake. In short, you'll generally end up equal, slightly better, or much better out of the opening. At the amateur level, that's all you can ask for. Often I find, however, that I get a positional advantage in the middlegame or endgame. It's up to me to convert that into a win.

Win With the London System - in my humble opinion - is probably the best book in print on the London right now, and I'll argue most would agree. If you only want to get one book, I would get Win With... first, as it's much more thorough and detailed and contains more sidelines. Then you can follow it up with this book and the game analyses it contains. The prose in both books are excellent. If you're a club player looking to boost your rating, both these books should carry you for quite some time as far as your openings with White is concerned.

As far as I know, Play the London System is IM Cyrus Lakdawala's first book, but it seems that the author is an experienced professional writer. The result is an oustanding labor of love. I use these words carefully. Many chess books, especially those by English authors, are really "assignments" more than anything else. "Write a book on opening xyz in so many pages." Sure, they might offer some tips, and perhaps the authors experiment a bit while working on their project of researching the current state of so-called "theory." The result is a recap / rehash of other books, with little that is new, perhaps some lines from Fritz thrown in. Okay, not very special, a dime a dozen.

This book is different. Cyrus really DOES play the London, and he loves it. And you get 92 well-annotated and profusely diagrammed complete games, from Lakdawala and other leading practitioners. Unlike so many other's books, the author's grasp of English is excellent. He provides just the right amount of verbal analysis and variations, as well as a summary of every game.

If you are interested in a solid opening that does not require reams of theory but has more punch and is more flexible that the Colle or Stonewall or similar "system" openings, get this book.

After reading this book, you know will not just how to get an advantage (or the plus side of equality) against best Black play, but you will know many typical tricks for White and for black (see his chapter, An Inconvenient Move Order for a major Black transpositional trick and how to avoid it). More importantly, you will have many excellent examples of how the middlegames and endgames are played for typical structures.

Buy this book!

I know what you're thinking: cripes, not ANOTHER book on the London! The London isn't really an "opening" or a "system" as it's often called, as much as a whole bunch of 1.d4 stepped transitions that generally lead to a nice stable position for white, through transpositions of other more aggressive openings.

There are three or four good books out on the London, particularly Win with the London System, and you're probably wondering 1. If you have Win, do you need this? and 2. If you're only now getting into the London, do you need this book, the '05 Win book, or both?

Well, the interesting thing is that the London has been around and seriously taken (especially if you're playing black) in club play for well over 10 years. If you see reviews that call it "new" or "dynamic" for club players, that's really a stretch! On the other hand. you'll see players calling it "boring," "slow," or "amateurish," but as a 2000 to 2100 player coaching a lot of club guys in the 1700 range, my advice if you can't practice at least an hour a day is to DEFINITELY consider adding the London to your stable of openings. Three primary reasons:

1. Because of the solid transpositions, you don't have to memorize a ton of variations, the basic lines are intuitive and stable, even with recent analysis by Fritz and HIARCS. In fact, if you play Fritz at lot, you'll find this a great opening against the Sicilian and computer black play in general.
2. The line may seem a little "dull," but honestly, it is very hard as black to gain any momentum against it. In general, it leads to some very nice rook endings for White if black plays conservatively as most computers do. For club players, many of blacks surprises, traps, pins, skewers, Knight fork tricks, etc. that can ruin your day are just impossible with the nice balance of center and diagonal control you end up with by move 19.
3. Although Everyman isn't quite as good as Gambit in general, there are enough new lines in this one to make it worthwhile even if you have Win. Unfortunately, Win still has so many good variations not covered here, that you probably need both to complete your repertoire, unless you've got a good library like London II, or one of the Chessbase DBMS systems with hundreds of thousands of London examples.

Just for fun, we put a line from Win into Fritz and played it against a different line in Play the London (both against black), and BOTH ended up with a +1.3 for White going into the endgame! No "system" will make up for a lack of endgame skills, so you're on your own after that, but both books have outstanding ideas for serious club or online play. Nobody who loves to play Black likes the London, because it simply shuts down a lot of the surprise lines, gambits and "wilder" tactics of aggressive Black players. The whole point of White is to stay a tempo up, and from that standpoint the London gives both positional and time advantages, because you can concentrate on good middlegame advantages instead of a ton of analysis in the opening. But, like a great golf player who can't putt, you still (honestly) have to do a lot of hard work on the endgame to make any "system" really work. In particular, this line will tend you toward more rook and bishop endings than pawn promotion and pawn structure endings, so if anything, it requires a little more endgame study than some other more aggressive open games.

All in all, this book is highly recommended, along with its very fine WIN predecessor. If you're read reviews that say "all club players playing Black already know and expect the London by now," well, yes, it's been around, but PLEASE! If black is stonewalled for 26 moves, you can't tell me any Black player will "welcome" this line. They would certainly rather play an E4 Sicilian combo that stare down at the SOLID, mistake free rhythm of this now time tested line! I play black a lot, and the London is one of my least favorites to contend with-- ask other black players-- many will tell you they would rather not deal with the solid play of an experienced London player, even if it seems a bit lumbering!