E. C. O. busted! : 535 refutations, re-evaluations, novelties, improvements and corrections to the Encyclopedia of chess openings

Suppose for a moment that you are studying an opening variation totry out in next month's tournament, or you're a correspondence playerchoosing between two lines of play. In the course of your preparationsyou consult a reference manual, say the Encyclopedia of ChessOpenings, and discover that a certain sequence of moves is said toend in a clear disadvantage for yourself. What now? The great majorityof us would simply think to ourselves, "Well, I certainly can't play that!Grandmaster so-and-so says I'll come out badly, so I'd better trysomething else."Unfortunately, at that precise moment our development aswell-rounded chess players got stunted; we began learning the habit ofslavishness, and began losing the capacity to think independently. Tocomplicate matters, in ninety-five cases out of one hundred"Grandmaster so-and-so" is correct, we will come out badly in that line.But what of the other five cases? How are we to recognize his lapses ifwe take every utterance of the professional uncritically? That is where Ihope the present volume will be found useful.Two goals were before me in compiling the material for this book.First, to help instill a healthy skepticism in the reader for establishedopening theory. Consider the words of Emanuel Lasker, who wrotethat " ... the chess student should not trust an analysis merely becausehe sees it in print. He must examine, he must do his own thinking andby conscientious work he must form his own judgment." I believe thatone way to achieve the "mistrust" Lasker desired in students is throughthe repetition of examples in which the best players have proven to bewrong. Such repetition, I think, also works toward my second goal:entertainment. Yes, we may hate to admit it, but watching the world'sleading players fall flat on their analytical faces does offer a certainperverse pleasure. And we learn that they too are mortal, afflicted withthe same chess blindness that we suffer from.**