When an opening book is written by one of the premier openings writers and theoreticians, there is naturally great interest by those who play the opening, and when it is titled "The Ultimate," expectations may be heightened even more. While THE ULTIMATE PIRC is a decent book, I'm not so sure it does its title justice.

Rather than an entirely new book, this is really a revision of Nunn's 1989 book, THE COMPLETE PIRC (which Nunn updated in 1993's NEW IDEAS IN THE PIRC DEFENSE). If you have those two books, you probably already have two-thirds of the book's content. What's more, you probably have 90% of the book's explanatory text. If you're an experienced player with a good understanding of the plans and strategies for both sides, then this isn't a big problem. For many players, however, the book's packed content will likely get their head spinning after awhile.

One of the hallmarks of Nunn's earlier Pirc books (and make no mistake, THE COMPLETE PIRC is an outstanding book) was his ability to combine rigorous analysis with trenchant explanation. While most of the previous explanation is left in place in this newer book, there is less new explanation in some of the newly popular lines.

While this book does a fine job of covering all the key variations with up-to-date theory, there is little that can't be found elsewhere. My perusal found far fewer original suggestions in this book compared to THE COMPLETE PIRC. In that regard, this book reminds me of co-author McNab's THE FIANCHETTO KING'S INDIAN than Nunn's earlier Pirc books. Perhaps McNab did most of the work on this effort.

In the end, this is a book that provides plenty of theory but not a lot more. If you're a serious Pirc devotee, you'll want to get this book. For others, you can probably find most of the theory from other sources.

Click to see Watson's review of this book.