by Jeroen Bosch, editor, 142pp. (New In Chess 2009)

Secrets of Opening Surprises brings you a wide variety of unusual opening ideas. They may seem outrageous at fi rst sight, but have proven to be perfectly playable.

An SOS deviates very early from the regular lines in a mainstream opening, usually even before move six! That is why it is so easy to actually bring the variation on the board.

You will baffle your opponent without having studied large quantities of stuffy theory.

Take a sneak-peak at the SOS's in this issue.

Contents
1 Jeroen Bosch - The SOS Files
2 Glenn Flear - Evans Above!
3 Jeroen Bosch - Murey's Advance Variation in the French
4 Stefan Löffler - A Trompowsky (K)nightmare
5 Alexander Finkel - A Non-Classic Way to Play the Classical Pirc
6 Dorian Rogozenco - Another Blumenfeld Surprise
7 Adrian Mikhalchishin - Combining the Spanish and the Scotch
8 Dimitri Reinderman - Dutch: the Hort-Antoshin Variation
9 Sergey Tiviakov - Sicilian Dragon: Avoiding the Main Line
10 Arthur Kogan - Edgy Knight in the Slav
11 Tibor Karolyi - Caro-Kann: the Karolyi Variation
12 Jeroen Bosch - QI Petrosian: Centralize Your Knight
13 Adrian Mikhalchishin - King's Fianchetto: Kasparov's Blitz Weapon
14 Alexander Finkel - Sicilian Motifs in the Trompowsky
15 Jeroen Bosch - Surprise in the Spanish Four Knights
16 Nikita Vitiugov - The Accelerated Ragozin
17 Jacob Aagaard - Nimzowitsch Opening: Exciting Symmetry

Readers of this series can ignore large areas of the ever expanding chess opening theory.

They can concentrate on these surprising ideas, because SOS variations deviate very early from the regular lines in mainstream openings.

Ideal for players who don’t have enough time to keep abreast with main line theory. Appears twice a year.

Carsten Hansen, ChessCafe.com: 'The variations can be exceedingly difficult if you are not prepared.'

IM Watson, The Week In Chess: 'The most entertaining of books about openings that I know of (...) I recommend SOS because it is so much fun, to be sure, but also for its practical utility.'

Joe Petrolito, Australian Chess: 'These suggestions are very attractive to club players.'

Chess Today:  'No matter what you play, you will find something exciting here.”

The Washington Post: 'A refreshing book, full of rare, uncommon but sound ideas that can spice up the opening repertoire of any tournament player.'

IM Jeremy Silman: 'You’ll be glad you joined Bosch’s bandwagon.'

GM Glenn Flear: 'Tricky opening ideas, not much to learn, surprise value and lots of fun.'