Black Defensive System For The Rest Of Your Chess Career

This was the first repertoire book I ever bought. The core defenses are the Caro-Kann vs 1.e4 and the Slav vs 1.d4. All other reasonable openings by White are considered. This book was instrumental in helping me run my rating up close to 2200 in the early 1990s. The book has two flaws. 1) Some of the moves are tactically flawed and will lead to bad or losing positions. At the time this book was written, most chess writers weren't using computer analysis to check their work. The author of this book admitted several years later that he didn't even own a computer. It shows, but you can't expect anybody to do all your chess thinking for you--even John Nunn or Garry Kasparov. 2) All repertoire books that offer a complete system for whatever White or Black can throw at you have the inherent flaw of having to save space by stressing ideas over concrete variations. In quiet lines this is fine, but nobody can get by in sharp lines by relying on general principles. I don't think this is much of a problem if you use a book like this as a starting point to create a repertoire and continue to upgrade it through independent research. If you're looking for a book that covers every important line in depth, more technical books are available.