The Taimanov Bible - Extended and Revised Edition

We have to admit that the idea of writing this book was planned for quite some time, but we hesitated to take the final step. Why? In today's era of computers we receive daily a sea of information. It's difficult to write something that will have important theoretical value and also a lasting impact. However, the wish prevailed within us to display the genesis of the Taimanov, an opening variation that has been a companion in our chess careers for more than twenty years.

With great pride we can state that the majority of the experts in our Sicilian friend come from Serbia, starting with the legendary Milan Matulovic, to Slavoljub Marjanovic, Dusan Rajkovic, Branko Damljanovic, and Igor Miladinovic... and this factor was surely an additional motivation to write this book.

We have tried to deliver a user-friendly style that suits all levels of players. Nowadays, chess players are overwhelmed with piles of information and endless databases. It is very difficult to choose "your variations” and therefore this book will surely come as a great additional help.

In addition to the basic Taimanov ideas we had to keep, we followed – in an original manner – our two main concepts: ‘almost never play an early ...d6’ (Scheveningen-style) and ‘push ...h5 whenever you can’ (Paulsen-style).

We have tried to demonstrate the classic game for the type of positions that occur in the Taimanov, in order to make our readers primarily able to familiarize themselves with the basic motifs and ideas of this Sicilian. When we believed the variations to be sharp and complicated, we have offered two possible continuations.