A full chess openings book. Everything you want to study about chess openings you can find in it. It is resumed and it's not complex. Good and easy to read!

The Chess-Player's mandatory reference work. If you are a postal player, or aspire to be a good player one day, this book absolutely, positively belongs on your shelf.

You don't think careful study of the opening's will improve your game? Look at the author. (Nick DeFirmian.) Right after he finished this book, he won the U.S. Championship. 'Nuff Said!

As a beginning player, (ICC standard rating around 1300), I find MCO to be extremely useful to familiarize myself quickly with the correct responses to virtually any opening. At my level, my opponents quickly leave the book; but up to the point they do, at least I'm not the first one to make a mistake. If one wants to quickly get familiar with an opening without studying it in great depth, MCO works. I'm sure it's useful to better players also; but I'm just commenting from a beginners point of view.

I purchased this book about a year ago. I have found it very useful in keeping my chess game sound and up to date. I was particularly pleased with the analysis of the Benko Gambit, inasmuch as my previous books had not addressed that tactic. The book contains analyses of other recent developments, as well.

With reference to more traditional openings and defenses, the book does not measure up to Horowitz: Chess Openings: Theory and Practice, so far as I am concerned. The variations of each opening, as well as theit nuances and theories, are simply not as thoroughly explored and explained.

This book is a good work for the serious player, but I would obtain and read Horowitz' book first.

An amazing reference book for the openings. It shows you all the best lines for almost every single opening. It also has a nice table of contents in the beginning which points you to the opening you need within seconds. Covers all the main variations of the openings too. If you have never seen a reference book, it's just pages and pages of tables with little footnotes explaining certain moves and other possible variations. All the moves are also computer checked for accuracy. What you do with one of these books is play a game like you normally would, and then after the game you check your opening by the way the book went. Then you mentally record your mistakes and you will greatly improve. This can also teach you a new opening, if you like memorizing lines of play. But I would not recommend that. This is the best one volume openings reference book. What I like about this one is that it gives a little background information for all the major openings. This is great for someone who just likes to know everything about chess, especially the opening they use. By the way, its also in algebraic notation, which is a plus. Although all this good stuff comes at a price. This will help however, as long as you use it right.

PROS:
Many Openings and Variations
Good Binding
Nice History of Openings
Algebraic Notation

CONS:
Won't Really Teach You Openings
Takes Some Time to Learn How to Read the Tables
Just A Reference Book

Summary: The best One-Volume openings reference book you can buy, well if you can afford it.

I recieved this book a few days ago, and it already helped me with some openings. I am a real beginner, (even "The ideas behind the chess openings" by Reuben Fine was hard for me to understand) but I'm glad I got this book. this book is a very good choice if it's the kind of book you are looking for. This is a giant list of lines with almost no verbal explanations - contrary to what some reviewers wrote. If you want to understand the ideas behind the openings it will help you only a bit thanks to the few pages of introduction before each of the openings. If you are looking for a list of all the opening lines it will help you a lot, especially if you know how to evaluate positions yourselves.

Rambling, disjointed, speculative, and obscure in its account of American chess history, this book is useful at best as a companion to a real chronicle.

This is a great book-for information,for humourous anecdotes,for some great games by great players,and for some excellent analysis of these games.A must-buy.