One book where the Everyman format does shine is Jon Speelman and Neil McDonald's Modern Defense. Here, precisely because the opening is less investigated, the authors' emphasis on ideas works well. The Modern Defense (1...g6) is divided up into two parts with McDonald covering lines where White doesn't play c4 and Speelman handling the rest. The first two chapters deal with systems where Black answers 1.e4 with a kingside fianchetto and ...c6 followed typically by ...d5. Named after the Georgian Grandmaster Gurgenidze, this structure makes a complete self-contained system. I'm not so sure about 1...g6, 2...Bg7 , 3...d6 as after 1.e4 g6 2.d4 Bg7 3.Nf3 d6 4.Be2 (as Walter Browne has played for close to thirty years -- White doesn't bring his QN out prematurely and keeps open options of c3 or c4) I don't see anything better for Black than heading into a Classical Pirc with 4...Nf6. Not that this is necessarily bad for Black, but it does avoid the Modern.

Speelman's part of the book starts with the Averbakh line 1.d4 g6 2.e4 Bg7 3.c4 d6 4.Nc3 Nc6, which he spends several chapters on. He helpfully points out that White has a way to force a draw starting with 5.d5 Nd4 6.Be3 c5 7.Nge2 Qb6 8.Nxd4 cxd4 9.Na4 Qa5+ 10.b4. The main lines with 5.Be3 are analyzed very well and the readers can appreciate that Speelman has a real interest and curiosity about the variation. He also covers related Averbakh lines like 4...e5 and 4...Nd7 before concluding with an interesting potpourri of odds and ends including the Dzindzhi-Indian (1.d4 g6 2.c4 Bg7 3.Nc3 c5 4.d5 Bxc3+ 5.bxc3 f5) which Speelman plays but distrusts!

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