Newsletter 23rd July 2010 – Including 22 annotated games
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
Are the planned and future GM Repertoires against 1. d4 going to offer complete solutions against 1. d4 or will coverage start only after 2. c4?
Thought the hardbacks for GM6 hadn’t been sent out yet? My order status is still “not shipped”. Patience is a difficult thing……
What a game yesterday! Jacob, you play with unpublished secret notes…Nice excerpt for GM 5
Because there was a technical problem at the printing factory, the hardbacks were delayed by a week. This meant that, unlike usual, the two shops which get our books directly from the factory received them at the same time as our warehouse, which then forward the books to us. In this way, they beat us by 2-3 days. We sent out the hardback copies from Glasgow yesterday – while these other shops sent them out Thursday or so – and locals will of course get it the next day.
This is not how things will be in the future, but how they are now.
I should say that ChessCafe and Chess4Less have both ordered our books for the US, but not the USCF.
Does GM6 complement or supersede Ftacnik’s Chessbase DVD on the same opening?
His DVD was on the Schevenninger, this is on the Najdorf. A DVD is usually 20-40 pages if written on paper – the book is 432 pages.
Here’s the “excerpt” of GM5 Victor was talking about.
[Event "Politiken Cup 2010"]
[Site "Copenhagen"]
[Date "2010.08.02"]
[Round "4.16"]
[White "Aagaard, Jacob"]
[Black "Stojanovski, Sandi"]
[Result "1-0"]
[WhiteElo "2542"]
[BlackElo "2208"]
[PlyCount "47"]
[EventDate "2010.??.??"]
[WhiteTeam "Sydřstfyn"]
[BlackTeam "K41"]
1. c4 c5 2. g3 Nc6 3. Bg2 g6 4. Nc3 Bg7 5. Nf3 e5 6. a3 a5 7. d4 Nxd4 8. Nxd4
cxd4 9. Nb5 d5 10. c5 Bf8 11. Bxd5 Bxc5 12. Qb3 Qe7 13. Bg5 f6 14. Bd2 Kf8 15.
O-O Kg7 16. Rac1 Bh3 17. Rxc5 Qxc5 18. Rc1 Qf8 19. Rc7+ Ne7 20. Be6 Bf5 21.
Bxf5 gxf5 22. Qe6 Re8 23. Nd6 Kg6 24. Rxe7 1-0
7. d4 is pretty stunning. Black has stonewalled the d4 square and white pushes anyway!
I had no opening knowledge at all in this game. I just played 1.c4 because of some jokes with friends here. In general I am not well prepared. I have analysed a lot of positions, but do not have a coherent repertoire at the moment.
Jacob, thanks for the response. My question was more driven by what Ftacnik writes in the introduction to the book about how it draws a lot on Scheveningen themes:
“Although the official subject of this book is the Najdorf variation, the two
systems share many common themes and can often transpose to one another. In certain places, such as Chapters 12 and 13….. the decision to recommend the response 6…e6, instead of equally valid alternatives such as 6…e5,
was influenced by my fondness for the Scheveningen set-up. I make no apologies for this, as I believe that an author can make the most useful contribution when writing about his own areas of expertise.”
I guess my question is really, WHEN I buy the book, do you think getting the DVD as well will increase my understanding of the opening, and be a good investment, or be a complete waste of time and cash?
I really do not have enough knowledge to say. It probably cannot hurt, but can it confuse – it is really an individual evaluation I dont want to pretend to be qualified to make.
Hello there
What happened with “The Alterman Gambit Guide – Black Gambits”?
Do you think these gambits are good enough for tournament play? Up to what level / range?
Thanks
I would think up to 2400 for the more suspecious ones, like the one against the French. But if the opponent is prepared, I would not play it. Otherwise I would take the chance against any non-IM/GM without being too worried.
Boris is writing the second book as we speak. I hope it will be out very early next year. We are keeping the educational line of them, teaching about the initiative, while making it more of a reliable repertoire.
@Paul
Paul, you were asking about the Ftacnik DVD compared to his book. I also haven’t seen the DVD, but I asked Lubo about it a while ago just to make sure our book would be original material. The DVD has next to no overlap with the book. Also, the DVD is intended as more of an introduction than a work of deep theory. Those are close to exact quotes from Lubo. I don’t know if that helps you decide whether you also want the DVD…
The DVD is very instructive. Worth purchasing if you are new to the Scheveningen.
Yesterday I received my hardback copy of GM6 which I ordered from this site. Packaging was good. The book was wrapped in bubble-plastic and put into a solid envelope. The hardcover itself is very good. Exactly what I want and for me totally worth the (extra) price. The paper looks and feels somewhat “glossy” and it feels quite different than other chess books I own but certainly not bad. About the contents of the book, Some minor lines are missing (1 e4 c5 2 f4 for instance, and the Be2 g4 line) but everything I expected is in the book.
I’m a happy customer and can’t wait for some of the books QC listed as “coming soon”