Opting Out of the Scandinavian

I've decided to opt out on the Scandinavian.

However the material for the Sicilian has a lot of holes in it, so I picked up a copy of Ftacnik's new book "The Sicilian Defense" to fill the gaps until ICS's material catches up (if it does eventually).

The book itself makes for some interesting reading, especially where he explains why he either adopted, or rejected the ICS lines. It also fills some of the glaring holes like 2.Nc3 which is showing up lately, and adds a main line which ICS defers (until month 7 if I recall correctly).

Any recommendations for next month, I'm really not all that excited about working the Dutch either!

I haven't used much of the ICS reportoire, although I do use the White lines against the Indian lines and Dutch, Benko etc.

I am a 1...e5 and 1...d5 player though so haven't used any of the Black recommendations yet.

The Scandanavian coverage, and that of the Dutch and especiall the French looks pretty fair to me though and I intend to maybe include some of them as alternative options in the future.

Bilbo wrote:The Scandanavian coverage, and that of the Dutch and especiall the French looks pretty fair to me though and I intend to maybe include some of them as alternative options in the future.

I've had to reconsider and now am planning to use their recommendations for the Dutch and Scandinavian in my next competition. Simply too much effort trying to work-around. And, after going through everything my prejudices were unfounded.

Thanks for your comments.

I treid the scandinavian a little, and it's interesting when you've just trained and know the moves in all variations, but i noticed the order of the moves is very important and not always the same in all the principal variations of the opening, and so after a while without specific training i got in displeasant positions with this opening because i was doing the correct moves but in the wrong order and that was making big difference.

So i prefer openings that are a bit more stable, like the guoco piano or the sicilian closed/english, even if the work is delayed to middlegame.

There was an Expert I use to play against at the club tournaments in Houston and he had the Scandinavian down to a science. Its all he played so everyone that pushed e4 knew what they were up against. I saw him win against Master level players with it...although I am a Pirc player myself, I can see its appeal.

I'm still just playing it against the computer in training games. It's easy to go wrong without a LOT of practice.

Currently I'm going though the B01 annotated games for chesspublications.com to fill in some of the gaps in the ICS repertoire. There's is good overlap in the ICS games and the commented games at chesspub which is very helpful.

What about the other reccomendation for e4; kalisnikov? Are you finding it more successful or challenging? I just started a month ago so I am still working thru the white side e4 and d4, but I was wondering how your progression was coming.

I'm only at month 7 so don't have the complete repertoire to work through. From what I've seen, it will become my preference, although it will take much more theory to master.

Good to know keep me posted and all the best!