Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings


The Encyclopedia of Chess Openings is a classification system for the opening moves in chess. It is presented as a five-volume book collection describing chess openings. The moves were taken from hundreds of thousands of games between masters, from published analysis in the Chess Informant since 1966, and then compiled by notable chess players. The main editor is Aleksandar Matanović. Both the ECO and the Chess Informant are published by the Serbian company Šahovski Informator. These openings are typically provided in an ECO table that concisely presents the best opening lines.
The books contain only a small amount of text, which is in eight languages. The bulk of the book consists of diagrams of positions and chess moves in International figurine algebraic notation, with special symbols for comments about moves.
Instead of the traditional names for the openings, ECO has developed a coding system that has also been adopted by other chess publications. There are five main categories, "A" to "E", each of which is divided into 100 subcategories.
ECO codes generally only cover openings that are commonly seen at the master/grandmaster level of play and which have a significant body of high quality games to draw examples from. Openings such as the Latvian Gambit and Grob's Attack are not given their own ECO code as in practice, they are almost never seen outside amateur-level play. These openings are all lumped under a single code such as E00 or A00.
ECO code is a registered trademark of Chess Informant.

Openings covered

Volume A: [Flank opening]s

A

The first edition was published in the following years:

Second edition

The second edition was published in the following years:
  • Volume A: 1996
  • Volume B: 1984
  • Volume C: 1981
  • Volume D: 1987
  • Volume E: 1991
CodeAuthor
04–05Bagirov, Vladimir
18–19Bagirov, Vladimir
13–14Botvinnik, Mikhail
13–14Abramov, Lev
10Filip, Miroslav
12Filip, Miroslav
15Filip, Miroslav
17Filip, Miroslav
36–39Filip, Miroslav
70–79Geller, Efim
95–99Gipslis, Aivars
20–21Gufeld, Eduard
23–26Gufeld, Eduard
02–03Hort, Vlastimil
80–85Kasparov, Garry
30–31Korchnoi, Viktor
34–35Korchnoi, Viktor
28–29Krnić, Zdenko
87Krnić, Zdenko
28–29Cvetković, Srđan
00–01Larsen, Bent
16Larsen, Bent
60–69Matanović, Aleksandar
60–69Ugrinović, Dragan
06Minev, Nikolay
11Minev, Nikolay
57Nunn, John
88–89Nunn, John
07–09Parma, Bruno
44Polugaevsky, Lev
50–53Polugaevsky, Lev
86Polugaevsky, Lev
90–94Polugaevsky, Lev
96Polugaevsky, Lev
27Suetin, Alexey
54–56Suetin, Alexey
58–59Suetin, Alexey
22Sveshnikov, Evgeny
33Sveshnikov, Evgeny
40–43Taimanov, Mark
45–49Taimanov, Mark
32Uhlmann, Wolfgang

Third edition

The third edition was published in the following years:
  • Volume A: 1999
  • Volume B: 1997
  • Volume C: 1997
  • Volume D: 1998
  • Volume E: 1998

    Fourth edition

The fourth edition was published in the following years:
  • Volume A: 2001
  • Volume B: 2002
  • Volume D: 2004
  • Volume E: 2008

    Fifth edition

The fifth edition was published in the following years:
  • Volume C: 2008
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