Quality Chess Blog

The company which runs the servers for our website and e-mails tells us we have had intermittent server outages during the past week. It is possible e-mails we have sent have not been received. Or maybe e-mails you sent to us have not reached us. It’s all a mystery. Apologies if there are any resulting mix-ups. This is beyond our control, but we shall sort it out as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, Andrew is back from the British Championship. No GM norm and he was rather off-form early on, but a storming finish got Andrew into the prizes at 3rd=.

Jacob returns today from the Politiken Cup in Copenhagen. In the Danish league Jacob is a team-mate of our author GM Lars Schandorff. Jacob and Lars had agreed that the team’s board order would be decided by their Tournament Performance Rating in the Politiken Cup. Lars 2478, Jacob 2479.  A clear victory.

Dear Quality Chess Reader,

We have now published two new books. GM Repertoire 6: The Sicilian Defence by GM Lubomir Ftacnik and The Quality Chess Puzzle Book by GM John Shaw.

GM Repertoire 6: The Sicilian Defence provides a sharp, complete repertoire for Black after 1.e4 c5.

The Quality Chess Puzzle Book offers 735 challenging puzzles to entertain and instruct the reader.

An innovation for this newsletter is a link to a ChessBase file with 22 games annotated by the Quality Chess team. In this case mainly GM Jacob Aagaard with a couple of contributions by GM John Shaw.

Quality Chess proudly sponsors chess events from time to time. Previously we have sponsored a rapid event in Edinburgh, the 2009 Scottish Championship, an IM-tournament in Edinburgh 2009, as well as the best game prizes at the Politiken Cup in 2006, 2009 and the forthcoming 2010 edition. We also recently sponsored the best game prizes in the 2010 Danish and Swedish Championships. The first 9 games in the file are all winners of a daily best game prize from the Swedish event. We have inserted an automatic question here and there to test those who are interested. Please enable your “Training Function” in order to allow yourself to be tested. There is also a position from our recent title Soviet Chess Strategy that also has a very nice puzzle, and quite a hard one.

Naturally we take an interest in how the lines suggested in our books fare after publication. A few of the other games are relevant to our opening books. One high-level example was Leko – Le Quang Liem from the elite Dortmund tournament. Black won after following for 12 moves the line recommended by GM Lars Schandorff in GM Repertoire 7: The Caro-Kann

Regards, Chief Editor John Shaw

The Scottish Championship concluded on Saturday in Hamilton. Our IM Andrew Greet was first on a very fine 7.5/9 while GM John Shaw (that would be me) finished a half point behind. So Andrew is Scottish Champion? Maybe. He was certainly awarded the trophy at the prize giving, but was he eligible? He is extremely English and has lived in Scotland for less than two years, so although he could play in the event (it was an international open) maybe the organisers gave him my nice shiny silver cup. The organisers are currently reading the rulebook rather closely…

The key game of the event was in Round 3 when Andrew Greet crushed me very efficiently. But let’s forget about that. In the previous round I won a sacrificial game against Andrew’s near namesake Andrew Green, so that’s the game to look at.

J. Shaw – A. Green, Scottish Championship 2010

1.e4 Nf6 2.e5 Nd5 3.d4 d6 4.Nf3 dxe5 5.Nxe5 c6 6.Nd2 Nd7 7.Ndf3 g6 8.Bc4 Bg7 9.0–0 0–0 10.Re1 Nxe5 11.dxe5

I thought 11.Nxe5 Be6 looked very solid for Black; in fact it turns out to be the main line.

11…Bg4 12.h3 Bxf3 13.Qxf3 e6 14.a4 Qc7 15.Qe4 Rfd8 16.h4 Rd7 17.h5 Ne7

Perhaps 17…Qd8 to stop Bg5.

18.Bg5 c5 19.c3 Nc6 20.hxg6 hxg6 21.Bf6 Na5

22.Bxe6!!

A rather obvious sac to analyse, but I took some time to convince myself that it was sound.

22…fxe6 23.Qxg6

The plan is a rook lift to e3 (or e4) and then turn right to the g- or h-file. It seems a little slow, but Black cannot arrange a defence.

23…Qc6

Black had too many defensive tries for me to analyse them all before sacrificing. A couple of fun lines are:

23…Nb3 24.Re3!? Nxa1 25.Rh3 and White wins.

23…Nc6 24.Re3 Rf7 25.Rh3 Ne7 26.Rh8+! Kxh8 27.Qxf7 Bxf6 28.Qxf6+ Kh7 29.Qf7+ Kh8 30.c4! And Ra3-h3 is a good swinger.

24.Re3 Rf8 25.Rh3 Rc8

After 25…Rff7 I planned Bxg7 when Black cannot recapture due to mate on e8, but also good is 26.Qh7+ Kf8 27.Qh8+ Bxh8 28.Rxh8#.

26.Qh7+ Kf8 27.Rg3

Black resigned, as mate is unavoidable.

An author can save the reader all sorts of suffering with a well constructed opening repertoire. I believe one of the strengths of Lars Schandorff’s GM Repertoire 7 – The Caro-Kann is the way he carefully selects his recommended move order to avoid lines where White has easy attacking play. The following game was played yesterday and shows exactly the sort of thing Lars avoids.

Dear Quality Chess Reader, 

Recently we have experimented by printing some of our books in hardback. It was a success both in the favourable feedback we received on our blog and in terms of the sales. In fact, the hardbacks disappeared so quickly that we at Quality Chess did not even get to keep a personal copy. For this and other reasons we are reprinting more hardback versions of Soviet Chess Strategy and GM Repertoire 7: The Caro-Kann. We hope they will be available in 3-4 weeks.   

GM Boris Alterman was on John Watson’s ICC Radio show Chess Talk. Boris talked about about his book The Alterman Gambit Guide – White Gambits which John Watson spoke about very favourably. A few quotes (from Jacob’s memory): "A great section on the Panov… Designed with the average player in mind. Can also be used by club players and other more experienced players… A very well produced book, typical of Quality Chess."  

The Quality Chess Puzzle Book and GM Repertoire 6 – The Sicilian Defence will both be out in early July. Some of our readers generously contributed to the puzzle book by sending in their best chess moments, which we used to create a chapter called Contributions from our Readers 

Regards, Quality Chess

www.qualitychess.co.uk

www.qualitychess.co.uk/blog

Publication Schedule (with predicted page numbers)

Lubomir Ftacnik    Grandmaster Repertoire 6 – The Sicilian Defence   July   356

John Shaw   Quality Chess Puzzle Book    July    256

Christian Bauer     Play the Scandinavian     July/August    320

Artur Yusupov    Boost your Chess 2    July/August    288

Mihail Marin    Grandmaster Repertoire 4 – The English Opening vol. 2    August   480 

Mihail Marin    Grandmaster Repertoire 5 – The English Opening vol. 3    August   320

Tibor Karolyi    Karpov’s Strategic Wins: Volume 1 – 1961-1985    September    360

Tibor Karolyi     Karpov’s Strategic Wins: Volume 2 – 1986-2009 September    360

John Shaw     The King’s Gambit      September/October    256

We are delighted that IM Andrew Greet recently made his first GM norm after countless years of trying – two more norms are needed for the title. Andrew has worked for Quality Chess for a year, so we claim editing and reading our books is the key to success.

In the last few days we have sent two books to the printer. Grandmaster Repertoire 7 : The Caro-Kann by Lars Schandorff and Soviet Chess Strategy by Alexey Suetin. Continuing our recent experiment,  we are printing some in hardcover – 200 Caro, 100 Soviet. They will be available from us, various chess shops in Europe, and Chess4Less in the US. Some people have requested a photo of our hardcover versions. I’m not sure you can feel the quality from a photo, but here is Jacob’s snap of a hardcover Cutting Edge:

The next two books in line are Grandmaster Repertoire 6: The Sicilian Defence by Lubomir Ftacnik and The Quality Chess Puzzle Book, allegedly by me.

Publication Schedule

Suetin
Soviet Chess Strategy
28 May 2010

Lars Schandorff
Grandmaster Repertoire 7 – The Caro-Kann
28 May 2010

Lubomir Ftacnik
Grandmaster Repertoire 6 – The Sicilian Defence
June

John Shaw
Quality Chess Puzzle Book
June

Christian Bauer
Play the Scandinavian
June

Artur Yusupov
Boost your Chess 2
June

Mihail Marin
Grandmaster Repertoire 4 – The English Opening vol. 2
July

Mihail Marin
Grandmaster Repertoire 5 – The English Opening vol. 3
July

Tibor Karolyi
Karpov’s Strategic Wins: Volume 1 – 1961-1985
August

Tibor Karolyi
Karpov’s Strategic Wins: Volume 2 – 1986 – 2009
August

John Shaw
The King’s Gambit
LATER

Boris Avrukh
GM Repertoire 8 – The Grunfeld Defence
LATER

Milos Pavlovic
The Cutting Edge 2 – The Najdorf Sicilian
LATER

Tiger Hillarp Persson
Middlegame book – TITLE NOT CONFIRMED
LATER

Mihail Marin
Common Grandmaster Mistakes – and how to avoid them
LATER

Artur Yusupov
Boost your Chess 3
LATER

Vassilios Kotronias
Middlegame book – TITLE NOT CONFIRMED
LATER

Jacob Aagaard
Grandmaster Repertoire x1 – 1.e4 – Ruy Lopez
NEXT YEAR

Jacob Aagaard
Grandmaster Repertoire x2 – 1.e4 – Sicilian
NEXT YEAR

Jacob Aagaard
Grandmaster Repertoire x3 – 1.e4 – French/Caro-Kann
NEXT YEAR

Jacob Aagaard
Grandmaster Repertoire x4 – 1.e4 other e5s
NEXT YEAR

Jacob Aagaard
Thinking Inside the Box
NEXT YEAR

Jacob Aagaard
Train your Chess Intuition
NEXT YEAR

We enjoy hearing from chessplayers who study our books and feel the benefit. The photo below shows players from the Sachovy Klub Lipa in a pub in the Czech Republic working hard on Artur Yusupov’s Build up your Chess 2. At least I assume they are working hard.

We are delighted to announce that Artur Yusupov has won the prestigious Boleslavsky Medal for his series Build up your Chess. This prize is awarded by FIDE, the World Chess Federation, to the best instructional book (it is also open to computer software or articles).

Winning a worldwide prize is remarkable, but the standard of the competition makes it even better: 2nd place was awarded to Garry Kasparov and 3rd was Mark Dvoretsky.

The full announcement can be seen at the FIDE website

We have made some slight changes to the publishing schedule. Latest version looks like this: