Grandmaster Milos Pavlovic was born in Belgrade in 1964 and was Yugoslav Champion in 2002. He is a well known theoretician specialising in opening theory and has written many chess books and magazine articles. Previously we have reviewed The Modernized Stonewall Defence and The Modernized Colle-Zukertort Attack by this author.
This is another title in the “Modernized” series from Thinkers Publishing with this Scotch Game book being published on December 17th 2019. We first reviewed a title in this series with The Modernized Caro-Kann from GM Daniel Fernandez and then followed by The Modernised Colle-Zukertort from Pavlovic.
As with every recent Thinkers Publishing publication high quality paper is used and the printing is clear. The book can easily be laid flat next to the board and does not require weights to prevent it from “self-closing” (a particular bugbear of ours !). Each diagram is clear and the instructional text is typeset in two column format, which, we find, enables the reader to maintain their place easily. Figurine algebraic notation is used throughout and the diagrams are placed adjacent to the relevant text and each diagram has a “to move” indicator.
Andrew Martin, Bramley, Surrey, 5th November, 2020
Book Details :
- Hardcover : 280 pages
- Publisher: Thinkers Publishing (17 Dec. 2019)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 9492510731
- ISBN-13: 978-9492510648
- Product Dimensions: 17.02 x 1.52 x 23.37 cm
Official web site of Thinkers Publishing
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I bought this book after reading Andrew Martin’s recommendation but I am very disappointed with it. It is clearly inferior to a couple of other books in the “Modernized” series by other authors which I bought in the past.
The coverage is very detailed in the lines the author chooses to recommend but there are huge omissions. In many places he omits altogether some important alternative moves for both White and Black without even a brief statement of why they are rejected. Just to give a couple of examples: in the Mieses Variation 4…Nf6 5 Nxc6 bxc6 6 e5 Qe7 7 Qe2 Nd5 he has a chapter on 8 Nd2 g6 (other replies are not mentioned) 9 c4 Pavlovic fails to mention the reply 9…Nf4 which is recommended in “Bologan’s Black Weapons “and is absolutely critical for the viability of the 8 Nd2 move order.
Then there are chapters on the main line 8 c4 Ba6 (he doesn’t mention 8…Nb6) 9 b3 but the main alternative 9 Nd2 (recommended for example on P. Negi’s DVD) is completely overlooked. So this book is useless for players intending to meet the Scotch as Black and not very thorough if you are intending to play it as White.
This prolific writer doesn’t often play the opening in his own games. (I found two as Black in my database – one from 1987 and one from 2019 – and none as White.)
I won’t be buying any more of Pavlovic’s books.