The Taimanov, the line in the Sicilian where Black plays ...e6 and ...Nc6, is noted both for its transpositional nature and popularity. Facing these two challenges head on, Burgess has done a first rate job of sifting through a huge mass of material and making sense of it. How he accomplished the job is likely to be a model for other authors in the future.

Even ten years ago books were written in a fashion that would have been recognizable to medieval monks. Authors copied by hand, organized mounds of papers and consulted piles of books. That's not what Burgess did. He wrote much of the book while working in ChessBase, and used other computer programs to double-check not only his work but also previously published analysis. This eliminated a lot of unnecessary errors.

A real theory book like this runs a definite risk of being unreadable, but The Taimanov Sicilian avoids this pitfall with a good dose of explanatory prose at the right moments. That said, this is not a book for the casual player. Look at a main line like 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nc6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Be3 Qc7 7. Be2 Nf6 8.O-O Bb4 9.Na4 O-O 10.Nxc6 bxc6 11.Nb6 Rb8 12.Nxc8 Rfxc8 13.Bxa6 Rd8 which goes another 10 moves before reaching the critical position! If you like the Taimanov and are rated over 2200, this is a must buy.

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