How do you get a king's pawn repertoire into 160 pages? Clearly the variations chosen have to be relatively easy to present and not in the theoretical mainstream. Right away, we know what the big problem is: what to do versus the Sicilian Defense. The Open Sicilians with 2.Nf3 and 3.d4 have thousands of pages of crucial theory, but then again, nothing else really gives White much to shout about (hence the popularity of 1...c5!). The usual solution would be to present the 2.c3 variation, the Bb5+ systems, the Grand Prix lines, or, as Emms recommends, the traditional Closed Sicilian (1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 and 3.g3). We will examine that shortly. The other major suggested lines are: the Bishop's Opening versus 1...e5 (an efficient solution, but still using up 31 pages); 2.c4 versus the Caro-Kann, the King's Indian Attack versus the French, the "150 Attack" versus both the Modern and Pirc Defenses; the Exchange Variation versus the Alekhine, 3.Bb5+ versus the 2...Nf6 Scandinavian and standard lines versus the 2...Qxd5 Scandinavian.

There are two things I should point out here. Apart from the 150 Attack, this is not an "attacking" repertoire at all. The lines are solid and even a little passive on average. Frankly, some of them I consider boring. But the great advantage of this, remembering that Emms has so few pages to work with, is that he has found sound and established lines that can be learned easily and will not be refuted. They are not irregular or speculative by any means. The other thing to note is that Emms cares about providing fair and detailed analysis, more so than the typical author, so you'll get a straight story, albeit without much instructional verbiage.

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