This book by Richard Palliser is out of print, and every time I take a peek on Amazon to see whether I can get it used, the asking price is higher than it was the last time. (It’s up to $95 now. Yeesh!)
If anyone out there in Forumland has a copy of this book, would you be willing to share which lines Palliser recommends for white in response to black’s various choices of defense?
I was curious, so I emailed the publisher to see if any of thier out-of-print titles are available as print-on-demand. I used to be in the quick copy printing industry, and we printed on-demand books at the place I worked.
Dunno if/when they will reply, but if they do, I’ll keep you posted.
Check out The Week in Chess (TWIC) to see if John Watson has reviewed the book. He usually gives a very good outline of a book’s contents and recommended lines. Plus some criticism of any weaknesses in the book.
Maybe you should take that as a sign. 
Play 1. e4! 
When I played a youngster recently and started out 1. e4, he said “Wait a minute, didn’t you tell me that moving a pawn in front of your king is a mistake?” 
So much more work studying tactics and openings when you play 1. e4. When you play 1. d4 you get to study pawn structures and endings. 
Seriously, if you want to set up a 1. d4 repertoire, look at what some of the top players do, check out NIC Yearbooks for theory articles, or adopt the repertoire of some great player (eg. Kasparov, Kramnik, Anand, etc.). Play what you like, understand, and feels comfortable to you. Don’t rely on just one source. Some suggested lines in these books are bad.
That’s worked for me with black, but white is proving difficult for me to get a grip on. One big difference is that as black, I can choose a single defense to study and be set and comfortable in 90 percent of my games. As white, I have to be prepared to deal with any of the dozen or so defenses my opponent may throw back at me. That’s a lot of experimentation to figure out which variations to prefer.
Adopting the repertoires of a couple of favorite players might work. I’ll give that a try. But I’d still like to know what Palliser suggests – supposedly, Play 1.d4! is geared to the more strategic, positional player, which I am.
Reviewed by a Board member, even…
jeremysilman.com/book_review … _1_d4.html
From the review & the chosen lines, it does look like a very solid repertoire book.
Boris Avrukh’s 1.d4 covers much of the same ground (same line against Slav, similar approach to QGA, but Catalan against QGD). This might suit your taste equally well.
The Opening for White According to Kramnik series might also be useful, as Khalifman et al. recommend 1.Nf3 in large part as a transpositional road to quiet 1.d4 lines.
You might also check out the new edition of Donaldson & Hansen, A Strategic Opening Repertoire. You can see the table of contents on Amazon.
Using Chessbase to examine the openings used by Capablanca, Nimzowitsch, Petrosian and Karpov, I’ve come up with the following potential repertoire:
QGA: 3.e4 Variation
QGD: Exchange Variation
Slav: Main Line
Semi-Slav: 5.e3/6.Qe2 Variation
KID: Sämisch Variation
NID: Rubinstein Variation
How does this package look to you other hyper-positional players out there? And should I worry enough about the Benoni and Grünfeld to study up on them as well?
(Just recognized an amusing irony in the abbreviation of the King’s Indian Defense, since it seems like kids always answer my 1.d4 with the KID, while adults rarely do.)
The KID Sämisch looks like the most questionable choice, as there are so many dynamic responses. You are not going to see …e7-e5 on move 6 very often. (It’s top-quality stuff, but I suffered with it & against it for many years.) I think Petrosian System is easier to handle and more likely to lead to the stable center you probably desire.
But there is no easy answer to the KID.
The others look like openings one can enjoy for the rest of one’s life: I assume you meant 6.Qc2 in the Semi-Slav.
I’ve been playing 1. d4 for so long, I usually let black decide the first few moves. Depending on what black does, it helps me decide what I want to do. I’m more than happy to transpose the game to more familiar lines within the first few moves. There are very few things black can whip out in the first 5 or 6 moves I haven’t seen, unless they’re just going completely out of the book. Either because they’re not familiar with book play, or because they’re trying to get me deliberately out of book.
I don’t actually study opening play that much anyway, other than the first 3 to 5 moves, since at my level, I can’t count on either me or my opponent staying in book much longer than that anyway. After that, I generally start making moves based on a combination of what I want the middle game to look like, and what my opponent is doing.
Your question intrigued me, so I obtained a two-week loan of the book through the interlibrary loan system. What, in particular, would you like to know? For the QGD he offers 3 Nf3.
Have you ever used bookfinder.com?
PM me.
I cannot recall a chess book going up in value like this!
Last time I checked, Benko’s endgame books were rather pricy.
Kaufman, The Chess Advantage in Black and White.
Most copies are over $100 per bookfinder.com.
Some fool in Germany wants $1,000 plus shipping.
Palliser does have another d4 based book out that is good. It’s also available from Everyman as an ebook.
everymanchess.com/chess/book … 50_Attacks
I believe he is also preparing a book on defending against 1 d4.
Already offered though not yet released, it is to be called How to Play against 1 d4. This is different from his already-published book on the Colle (etc.). Gary Lane’s book on the Colle went out of print and the Starting Out book which you mention may fill a gap in the marketplace.
It’s a completely different book aimed at a completely different audience. “Play 1. d4!” is a repertoire book based on main line openings starting with 1. d4 and 2. c4, while “Starting Out: d-Pawn Attacks” is a repertoire book based on less common openings that begin 1. d4 without c4.
Understood. I merely mentioned the ebook as a passing comment. You might order the d4 book you want via interlibrary loan and scan it for your own use. Time consuming but doable.
An email from Blackwell’s in Oxford, England advises: “Reprint under consideration.”
You can download unannotated pgn from gambitchess.com