Do you think less of Magnus Carlsen after his emotional outburst at the World Blitz Championship?
A few days ago I had a discussion with a friend on Skype about Carlsen’s swearing and throwing of a pen during the World Blitz Championship. The best way to bring my point across is to give a slightly edited version of the conversation. After this, vote on the poll please…
“Before I let you go. What is your opinion of Carlsen loudly exclaiming “baen” in the middle of the tournament hall after losing to Grischuk?”
“It is great. I think he said “faen”, which is short for “for fanden”, “done on behalf of the devil” or simply “the devil’s work”. It might be spelled differently in Norwegian, but essentially it is Danish.”
“But very vulgar, right? Google translate and chess.com mistranslated it to f***.”
“Not really no. In English it is “damn.” But either way: do you want the sexlessness of tennis players? Or Tiger Woods? They are like Ken; and the blonde tennis girls are like Barbie. They always talk so nicely about everything and everyone, while it is common knowledge they all hate each other. Because the sponsors want to avoid negative PR. F*** that!”
“Good point.”
“Give me a sport with some emotion please. I love Nakamura, because he is like John McEnroe, clearly a bit full of himself, but brings attention to the sport and cares deeply about it – and is fun to watch. His feuds with Carlsen are entertaining. And Carlsen’s feuds with Kramnik are entertaining. Kramnik and Carlsen get along fine, though they both enjoy some banter…”
We had four days of very interesting lectures from former challenger Nigel Short on attacking chess. It was simply exceptional. One participant described it as the most enjoyable 15 hours in his chess career. In one game Nigel showed us how he self-forked his pieces. It seems he was a bad influence on himself:
Alon Greenfeld – Nigel Short
Isle of Man 07.10.2015
“I won by forking my own pieces today? Even if nobody else benefited from my talks, I certainly have!” Nigel Short sent this message after his splendid lectures in Edinburgh Chess Club last week.
1.Nf3 d5 2.c4 d4 3.b4 Bg4 4.g3 f6 5.Bg2 e5 6.0–0 Nd7 7.Qb3 a5 8.e3 dxe3 9.fxe3 axb4 10.d4 Be6 11.Bb2 Nh6 12.dxe5 fxe5 13.Nbd2 Nf7
The opening had not gone very well for White, but after this Greenfeld finds a way back into the game.
Recently one of our employees fell out online with a chess writer for a competing chess publisher. The said writer fell for a hoax and our employee teased him a bit, while telling him. Said writer took offence. Things go wrong in written language all the time. No story.
The writer clearly had a bigger think and posted this comment on his thread:
One by one I have had to remove ‘Quality Chess’ people from my ‘friends’ list. I guess in a way it has been inevitable, every atom of my being is opposed to their approach to publishing and the marketing of highly sophisticated openings books. The ‘market’ is way too weak for these books but it’s easy to convince people that they need them.
I am all for good old-time mud-wrestling, but somehow it is less interesting to watch when it is performed by slightly bulky middle-aged men. So therefore I would prefer to turn it into a debate with our readers, you guys. Do you think that there is some truth in what this guy says? I will give my own view first.
Most of our new books will be on Forward Chess and will be available a week before they are available in shops. This is obviously a move to support this format and get it off the ground. Not because we want it to take over from paper books, but because we want to make sure that this format flourishes as a viable alternative.
One minor advantage with this format is that on the rare occasions where we make small corrections to books, they happen to the Forward Chess books. Recently a few corrections were included in Positional Decision Making in Chess ahead of the reprint of hardback copies that will take place in a few weeks’ time. To make sure that you have the corrected book, use the restore purchases option in the App. For everyone else, you will have to wait for my blog post on the subject, also coming in a few weeks’ time…
Setting a price for a seminar is difficult. I hope to not lose too much money while organising them, while at the same time I hope to have big attendance, which is the reason I organise them in the first place.
This week we will have a visit from Nigel Short. I set the price at £150 for four days, thinking it is good value and I would not lose too much. While the second part is true, the attendance is lower than I had hoped. For this reason I will reduce the price with £10 per extra participant registering from now on for all participants, of course. It will not go under £100, which is what I have charged for other seminars. But if 5 more people decides to attend, the price will be down to £100…
In the final Armageddon game in the match Nakamura – Nepomniachtchi, Nakamura castled with two hands on move 5. Following a Facebook discussion with a lot of intelligent people, I have come to two possible opinions of the arbiter’s responsibility in this situation.
First a few clear things:
1) This is an illegal act. You have to move the king, then the rook
2) The game is not a blitz game according to the rules, so the arbiter can step in should he find it fitting
3) The penalty would be an extra minute awarded to Nepomniachtchi
So the vote is on the following: How do you see the arbiter’s primary role?
a) To make sure that the rules are followed to the letter
b) To make sure the game is performed in a fair and fluent manner
A few weeks back (as we assume you have noticed) the English Chess Federation released their shortlist of nominees for book of the year (going from 1st August 2014 to 31st July 2015). Each publisher is allowed to send two books to the judges. A shortlist of four books is then announced.
Both books we put forward this year were shortlisted. Here is what the judges had to say:
“The book was ‘born out of my desire to guide players who, like me, struggle to apply their strategic knowledge to a practical game’. Rios shows exceptional clarity of organisation and selection of (nearly all contemporary) illustrative games. Each of the 140 games starts with ‘Learning Objective’ and concludes with ’Final Remarks’. In all, ‘28’ chess structures are covered and the book finishes with 50 exercises. It is hard to imagine any student not learning from this book; but the problems of using this knowledge over the board, even for a world-class player, are discussed in the Gelfand book below.”
“This remarkable book, written in collaboration with Jacob Aagaard, is an attempt to show how a world-class player (there are few with Gelfand’s extensive top-level experience) thinks during the course of a game. As the title suggests, the games selected concentrate on aspects of positional play such as space advantage or the squeeze. Very interestingly, Gelfand admits to being strongly influenced by Akiba Rubinstein, a great player in the first half of the 20th century; a number of Rubinstein’s games are included. Throughout, Gelfand is very honest about his thoughts and recollections during the games presented. As a result the book is a fascinating insight into the mind of a great chess player at work.”
Quality Chess has previously won the ECF Book of the Year award with:
2007:San Luis 2005 – Gershon & Nor 2010:Attacking Manual 1&2 – Jacob Aagaard 2013:How I Beat Fischer’s Record – Judit Polgar
Quality Chess will send a box of 20 books to your home, wherever in the world that may be. 10 of them chosen by you, 10 of them chosen by us. All you have to do is to predict some results in the World Cup. We will contact the winner once the World Cup is over and organize the shipment of the prize.
Hurdle Questions: In order for us to quickly reduce the number of emails to check, only participants who get the three initial questions right will proceed to the second round of scoring. The points scored here will count in the second round (unless otherwise stated, a correct answer is worth one point).
A: What will the most common opening move be in round 1 (excluding playoffs): 1.e4 or 1.d4 or neither?
B: Which of these home players will go further: Rauf Mamedov or Eltaj Safarli? (if knocked out at same stage then which one has played more moves is the tiebreak)
C: Which opening will be more common in round 3 (excluding playoffs)? Najdorf or Catalan or tie?
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