Quality Chess Blog

At a time where Kirsan the fool is visiting all torture chambers in the world in the name of chess, it is nice to see something optimistic and fun regarding our game. This is my current experience of typesetting Mayhem in the Morra by Marc Esserman. It is not a coincidence, but faith, that we will be able to publish this book on the 4th of July. With this we celebrate our ability to think independently of our leaders, whether they are responsible for the financial mess we are in, responsible for the rules of football where everyone in the world but the referee is allowed to see that there was a penalty in Denmark-Germany or Greece-Russia for that sake – or just straight loons like Kirsan…

“A belief in the existence of Santa Claus is more rational than imagining White has adequate compensation after the unwarranted 3.c3?” – Nigel Short

I hope I will one day be White against Nigel and he plays 1…c5!

I promised to put the following on our blog. I have not read Martin’s novel (or the Game of Thrones books, which are on the shelf looking at me), so I cannot give a personal opinion, except that obviously this must be a great novel 😎

Martin Weteschnik, a Quality Chess Books author, has published his first literary work. The novel “Endgames” plays in San Francisco, where the author lived for about five years. Although not exclusively a chess novel, FM Weteschnik has brought in many of insights from his active time when he was also training with people of world-class format. A review in the German Chess magazine “Rochade” asserted that the novel has presented an extraordinary view on chess.

“Endgames” is available as an ebook at amazon and smashwords.

I am focusing on the match in Moscow and working on finishing additional books whenever I have a free moment. Being away from the family gives you this chance to work from 7am to 12pm that you just do not get at home! Meanwhile Colin is quite far in the editing of MAYHEM IN THE MORRA and we are also quite far with PLAYING 1.d4 VOLUME 1 and PLAYING 1.d4 VOLUME 2. We would have liked to have the 1.d4 books out in June, but it seems just a little bit tight. There were a few places where we wanted to analyse a bit deeper and also Lars wanted to check some things, so his updates came a bit slower than was expected. Maybe we will still make it, I will start typesetting some finished chapters tomorrow (free day here) and then we will take it from there. My guess is still the first two weeks of July.

As far as I can see, here at move 35 we are heading for a draw. Gelfand did not play the ending in the most dangerous way, but it was even a bit worse than that. At move 19 he decided to win the queen, when 19.Bg3 was immensely strong as far as I could see. After 19…Qb4 White has 20.Qb7! with strong pressure. For example 20…Qa5 21.Bd6 and as far as I could see, Black is just busted. Disappointing…

I am in Denmark playing a perpetual double round event (lost to a promising junior in round 4 after some escapes earlier and am on 2.5/4). Monday I am going to Moscow to follow the World Championship from game 9. Meanwhile Andrew, Colin and John work non-stop to finish books back in Glasgow.

People keep asking what level the Grandmaster Preparation series is going to be at, ignoring the hint given by the title! Also I get asked a lot if this series will work well as a sequence to the Yusupov series. The answer is YES, but they can also work in combination. Whatever inspires you will definitely work. All will become clear when I talk about the enjoyment circle in THINKING INSIDE THE BOX.

Will we be giving a 5 for the price of 4 offer on the site? Yes, we will. But only for shipments within the European Union and as it looks now only when we have published all the books. But if you want to get them as they come out (in hardcover) then make a deal with your local chess retailer. I have only asked one and they said they would definitely say yes if someone offered them €100+postage up front for the books. Who wouldn’t?

Let me tell you quickly about what will be in the books: First of all, they will mainly be workbooks. That’s right, plenty of exercises. You do the work while I sit on the beach drinking pina colada checking the royalties tick in on his 3g Ipad. But at the end of it you will be fit for fight and I will be fat and slightly crisp…

The theory behind the training will be presented shortly in an easy to understand way. This is meant to be simple and practical.

I will write introduction chapters to each set of exercises, with the only intention being to inspire and entertain. I find chess fun anyway!

The exercises will be difficult, but not impossible – unless labled as such! In the CALCULATION book we will have 75 positions in the “Difficult Positions” section. The remaining 375 will be “easier”. Not easy. Remember, this is a series of books that will prepare you for competing at Grandmaster level.

CALCULATION will not cover all minor parts of calculation theory (I did this in Excelling at Chess Calculation), but offer exercises in eight sections: Candidates, Combiantional Vision, Prophylaxis, Comparison, Elimination, Intermediate Moves, Imagination & Traps. Then there will be 10 tests of six positions each and then the already mentioned difficult positions.

POSITIONAL PLAY will be the easiest of the books. This is really an introduction to the strategy book. I would say that players under 2400 would gain a lot of benefit from this book, while 1 in 3 players between 2400 and 2600 might learn something new going through the planned 125 exercises. The book will be built on the three questions:1) where are the weaknesses, 2) what is my opponent’s idea & 3) which is the worst placed piece. Again simplicity is the goal. And yes, I have used these questions in teachning positional understading to players over 2600 and they do not find them “too” simple.

STRATEGIC PLAY is going to be quite difficult. Where positional exercises are based on positional improvement in the present, strategy is long term positional improvement. So, call it a blend of calculation and positional play if you like, but know that in strategy you can at times do poor seemingly positional decisions now to get a great positional advantage five moves down the line.

ENDGAME PLAY will to some extent be an expansion of the previous books. It will include a lot of “tactics in the endgame” exercises and a lot of “strategic play in the endgame” exercises.

THINKING INSIDE THE BOX will be a mixture of everything. Chess training. Chess psychology. Chess philosophy. Different approaches to the opening, middlegame and endgame. Analysing your own games. Other ways to improve your chess. And so on.

Thank you all for the debate on the reviews. As is normal, most people supported my point of view (which is why they read this blog in general, I assume), so I want to especially want to thank those that disagreed. A debate is more interesting if you have more than one point of view represented. I still disagree, but I appreciate you for making your opinion present, especially when immediately a few people will jump up and say we should not listen to you. On the contrary, we should, but use our sound judgement of course.

Today I spotted another review of one of our books: Chess Evolution 1 – The Fundamentals. It is generally favourable (5/6), but has some quite fair complaints about the book:

“Given the confusing structure of this nine-volume series of instructional books, it seems as if the publisher took a page from the George Lucas handbook. The course is made-up of three series, each with three levels: The Fundamentals, Beyond the Basics, and Mastery.”

This is the start and the reviewer returns to the point a few times. Yes, the series is not well structured in the way we have done it. We did it to ourselves, of course. What happened was that we took on volume 1 of each of Artur’s three serieses and then later on changed our minds and took all three. Suddenly we were trapped.

The other criticism we recognise extremely well is that the volume is meant to be easy (the German title actually translates pretty closely into “how to reach 1500 in elo”). We killed this German title and all connection to it in the marketing (but had to keep it in the book) because we found it entirely bonkers. As an example, I had three of my students solve exercises from Boost your Chess 3. Of 56 points they scored 55 (rated 2650), 52 (rated 2560) and 38 (rated 2250 – with one IM-norm). So this is what is needed to get to 2100? No, clearly you are much better than that if you know all the stuff in these books! My guess is beyond 2400, if you have the practical experience as well.

Michael McGuerty writes it like this:

“Yusupov writes that the material targets three groups according to rating strength: under Elo 1500, under Elo 1800, and under Elo 2100. Even so, the lessons are at a very high level. Consider that the following two examples are the from the first lesson, “Combinations involving bishops,” in Chess Evolution 1: The Fundamentals, which is the third book of the Fundamentals Series (given here without the accompanying deep analysis):”

Then he goes on to give a few examples of how difficult the exercises actually are. And they are quite challenging indeed.

An excellent review, which seems entirely flawless to me. Maybe he rates the book too highly? This is probably the only place where anyone would seriously disagree with him!

I used to review for SKAKBLADET, the Danish Federation’s magazine, but was axed because I became a publisher. I then continued reviewing for Chess Today, where I had the principle of not reviewing books I could not recommend, because I was a publisher. Still other publishers complained and I was axed 8-). I reviewed only to advise people honestly and because I love books, but it seems that my opinions are not welcome. Ok, never mind. More time for writing now that I am no longer officially a reader!

More importantly, as a publisher we have had to consider what to do with reviewers and reviews. Very early on we worked out a few basic principles: 1) Not to send copies to reviewers that gave everyone a glorious review. 2) Not to argue with reviewers. 3) Not to care about bad reviews, although we want to take the points raised seriously.

We did violate 2&3 on one occasion, when a prominent reviewer butchered a book based on almost entirely wrong claims. We did so respectfully and have continued to send books to him.

Now I am about to break rule 2 again. Honestly I am not bothered about the likes and dislikes of these reviewers, for reasons that shall become apparent below. But I think there is an important point (see headline) that is worth raising about reviews of chess books in general. So, reading two recent reviews I could not help noticing how people can have some initial expectations and even after realising that the books are not what they expected, they continue to measure them against these expectations, directly or indirectly.

The first review I want to comment on can be found at Chessville and is of Experts on the Anti-Sicilian edited by John and myself.

The reviewer Bill McGeary is not known to us, but I have read a few of his other reviews in order to see if I can pinpoint his way of thinking. I am not sure I was successful, but I think it is fair to say that he is speaking generally from personal experience and in general finds chess books to be expensive…

The first quote from his review that caught my eye was this:

It seems that each co-author would delve into specific areas and work on them solely. The advantage to this is that the reader can get material that is more detailed, usually on a line the co-author uses, and can hear the ideas of a higher level player on those lines. The disadvantage is that the book buyer sometimes pays for material that is highly irrelevant to them. I guess it all depends on what the public is looking for?

The underlining is mine, because it shows a thinking we will see later on. However, it is faulty. At 440 pages Experts on the Anti-Sicilian is longer than most of our books, but prices the same as the others. This is of course intentional from our side, because we know that no one will be interested in everything in this book.

There are things I would want to question just about everywhere, but let us just take a few examples:

Back to the table of contents. I noticed chapter 12 “A Ten Minute Repertoire against the Closed Sicilian” by GM Pavlovic was eight pages. So off I went. It seems that the GM likes playing the Botvinnik setup as Black in the Closed Sicilian 1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.g3 g6 4.Bg2 Bg7 5.d3 d6 and either 6.f4 e5 or 6.Be3 e5. This section seemed too rushed to me, the author throws sequences of moves out and then pronounces that Black is fine. This just didn’t set well with me.

Obviously the reviewer wanted the chapter to be something else. But reading his explanations, you cannot get around that Pavlovic has produced exactly what he said he had produced.

What really took me off guard was the eight chapters by GM Cornette on the “Tiviakov Grand Prix” 1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.Bb5. It dawned on me that I had simply assumed from the title that this was a book aimed specifically for players of the Black pieces, now I was realizing that I had been mistaken.

The title is on not against or similar. But ok, others have made the misconception. Still, the first ever serious treatment of this interesting line with tons of new analysis is hardly making the book worse, or is it? Later on the review writes:

Aside from that misunderstanding I have to say that the book is disappointing anyway. Ten out of 25 chapters are dealing with the Black side and five of those chapters are 8 pages, 4 pages, 11 pages, 8 pages and 7 pages. The best material for the Black player are the two chapters by Hillarp-Persson I mentioned, and GM Aagaard’s look at the Classical 2.c3 Sicilain, a very complete chapter.

So, am I disappointed because there is so much material for White? To be honest, yes – a little. More than that is the amount of material that was poorly researched or written (read my comments above about the Kings Indian Attack chapter) and how much of is seemed redundant. There are eight chapters on 1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.Bb5 and three of them are followed by chapters where the author suggest White’s play is better than the previous chapter.

Let us start with the out-right mistakes. First of all, as previously understood by the reviewer, this is not a repertoire book for Black. Actually, it is hardly a repertoire book at all. So why does he continue to write as if it should have been? Secondly, these eight chapters by Cornette are help up against the rest of the book as if they are massive. One of them is only 2 pages! My 2.c3-Chapter could have been four chapters and the balance in chapters would be different?! I cannot help but feel the reviewer is back at his main argument about “paying for what you do not need”.

But it is also completely incorrect to say that Bauer’s and Cornette’s chapters are only useful for white players. Both players look at various lines objectively and in all five lines Black comes out on the other side with equality. Bauer at some point clearly states that this line is nothing, unless people are not well prepared, with the point that people often are entirely unprepared for it.

This is not to say the reviewer did not have some interesting opinions. But he was not reviewing the book we published as much as the book he expected us to publish.

This is also the case with the second case I want to raise:

The review is of The Grandmaster Battle Manual by Kotronias and is written by Michael Goeller. It would be unfair to mark the reviwers, but I would like to say that I have no issues with Mr Goeller’s general effort (on the contrary, he did a great, but not flawless, job). I am not going to go on too much about this review (you need to get back to work and in all fairness – so do I), but  I do want to point to a section in the beginning of the review:

[The Grandmaster Battle Manual] sets a similar high standard, though perhaps a bit higher than most of us are able to reach. While it is ultimately a good collection of deeply annotated GM games, it does not provide the middlegame primer that it promises. The themes it covers seem idiosyncratic more than systematic in their selection, the games too often seem stretched to fit the chapter rather than specifically chosen to illustrate the theme, and the implied reader seems expected to know much more than the general chess readership.

You are probably on to me already. Indeed, nowhere does Kotronias or Quality Chess say that this is a middlegame primer. Actually, the title was meant to hint that the book is pretty advanced, which apparently has not reached everyone. We need to think about this, but for now let us just say that the book is very advanced, is not a primer, does not promise to give full coverage of the middlegame or anything of that sort.In the last decade half of all chess books published (more or less) have promised full understanding of a complex area in 128 pages (ok, occasionally more) and this seems to have become the expectation from a good part of the chess readers out there. Most recent we have 60 minute videos by ChessBase on various openings. Fine as a surprise weapon in the club championship, but insufficient for a game against a good player in an open tournament.

Quality Chess will of course publish primers from time to time and do so to the best of our ability. Most recently Chess Tactics from Scratch, which we think is an excellent book. But we will also publish books that aim higher and where not everyone can understand/follow everything. We will not apologise for this. Chess is difficult and requires an effort to understand. Just as anything else which is worth while spending your time on. We try to help, but we do not offer false promises.