Quality Chess Blog

Two friends of mine are teaching chess at schools in Denmark. Recently they were trawling the corridors looking for new recruits for the chess club. They found some 13 year olds sitting against the wall sulking.
“Are you not supposed to be at class,” Marie asked.
“Our teacher is absent. We were supposed to have sexual education,” one of the kids replied.
“Well, we can teach you a bit,” Nikolaj tried, pointing to the chess board. “In chess, sometimes the king takes the queen.” A wink was included to show how street he was (or something).
“What happens if the king takes the horse,” on kid asked.
“And what if the bishop takes the little ones,” another asked.

I feel bullied and pushed into publishing an updated publishing schedule. As you will see it is rather full and we are very busy. So for now I will leave it at that.

Lars Schandorff	Playing 1.d4 – GM Guide – The Queen’s Gambit	May
Lars Schandorff	Playing 1.d4 – GM Guide – The Indian Defences	May
Artur Yusupov	Chess Evolution 2	May/June
John Shaw	The King’s Gambit	May/June
Boris Avrukh	GM Repertoire X – Beating 1.d4 Sidelines	June/July
Jacob Aagaard	Attacking Manual 1 – German	June/July
Ftacnik	GM6a – Dealing with Anti–Sicilians	July
Ftacnik	GM6b – The Najdorf	July
John Shaw	Playing 1.e4 – GM Guide – Caro–Kann, 1…e5 & Minor Lines	July
John Shaw	Playing 1.e4 – GM Guide II – The Sicilian & The French	July
Jacob Aagaard	GM Preparation – Calculation (Hardcover)	May/June
Jacob Aagaard	GM Preparation – Positional Play (Hardcover)	June/July
Jacob Aagaard	GM Preparation – Strategic Play (Hardcover)	July/August
Jacob Aagaard	GM Preparation – Endgame Play (Hardcover)	September
Jacob Aagaard	GM Preparation – Thinking Inside the Box (Hardcover)	October
Jacob Aagaard	GM Preparation – Calculation	October
Jacob Aagaard	GM Preparation – Positional Play	October
Jacob Aagaard	GM Preparation – Strategic Play	October
Jacob Aagaard	GM Preparation – Endgame Play	October
Jacob Aagaard	GM Preparation – Thinking Inside the Box	October
Jacob Aagaard	Attacking Manual 2 – German	September
Judit Polgar	Judit Polgar Teaches Chess 1 – How I Beat Fischer’s Record	September
Romanovsky	Soviet Middlegame Technique	October
Artur Yusupov	Chess Evolution 3	November
Victor Mikhalevski	GM Repertoire – The Open Spanish	LATER
Tibor Karolyi	Mikhail Tal’s best games 1	LATER
Jacob Aagaard	GM Repertoire x1 – 1.e4 – Sicilian	LATER
Marc Esserman	Mayhem in the Morra	LATER
Nikos (w/Jacob Aagaard)	Playing the French	LATER
Nick Pert	GM Repertoire X – Classical Slav	LATER

For the third year in a row a Quality Chess book was awarded the Opening Book of the Year honour by the good people roaming the ChessPub forum. In 2009 Marin won it for Grandmaster Repertoire 3 – The English Opening Volume 1. In 2010 Boris Avrukh won it for Grandmaster Repertoire 2 – 1.d4 volume 2. This year it is Avrukh again, taking in most votes for Grandmaster Repertoire 8 and Grandmaster Repertoire 9 – his two volumes on the Grunfeld Defence.

The votes fell line this.

Obviously I am disappointed that people did not give it to the Tarrasch, but this is the price for writing on a fringe opening. Also, note that another great opening book from 2011 – The Safest Grunfeld from Chess Stars is not on the list. Exactly why that is, I do not know. I am sure Boris would have won anyway, but it would have been nice if it had been included.

You can find the forum post here.

I spent almost eight years writing the Attacking Manuals two books (AM1 and AM2) and felt absolutely drained at the end of the process. Obviously I did a lot of things in the meanwhile, but mainly I felt anxiety about my ability to reach the necessary level for making these books as good as I wanted them to be. Completing the GM title and becoming British Champion definitely helped. 2007 was a very tough year for Quality Chess and for me personally, but ended on a high by the birth of my first child.

We are now speaking more than four years later. Attacking Manual 2 came out in 2010 and I won the ECF book of the year award for the two volumes combined. In the end it was all worth it.

Enter the room in February 2011: Nikos (Nikolaos Ntirlis). Unknown outside Greece and to many Greeks as well, close to unrated (would have preferred to be) and full of ideas. I was so fascinated that I entered a mad project – the complete revival of the Tarrasch Defence. The result was Grandmaster Repertoire 10 – The Tarrasch Defence. We both worked so hard that Nikos went from criticising all books on the Chesspub forum to praising anyone who write an opening book and live to tell the tale!

But was it worth it? Well, initial sales have been good. People are interested (which is far more important to us than money – though we need to pay the rent of course). This is more important than the reviews, but the reviews are easier to pass on, so here we go:

The first one is from the Danish newspaper Politiken. Their chess journalist is a sometimes 2600 Danish GM who sent a private message to me on Facebook calling me insane – based on the work we had done with the book. He claimed we were making amateurs into GMs with it, which I would contest. But we have definitely given them a fighting chance against GMs!

The actual review looks like this in my translation:

“Most opening books are a collection of existing knowledge and a few extra ideas in critical positions. This is not the case with Jacob Aagaard’s and Nikolaos Ntirlis’ (called Nikos) new book on the Tarrasch Defence in the Queen’s Gambit. The book is the result of a large piece of research where the two authors have succeeded in turning completely new pages in opening theory.

Before The Tarrasch Defence was published the opening was considered dubious, but now that it is here, all super-GMs have been recalled to the laboratory. All main lines have been repaired, including those no one knew were broken. Have a look: 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 c5 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Nf3 Nc6 6.dxc5! This line has always been considered completely harmless, but it is not and is handled over 37 pages! (Don’t fear – Black will be all right in the end.) The book is ground breaking and sets new standards for the future of opening books.”

GM Sune Berg Hansen

This is of course very flattering, but it is not necessarily the most positive review we have received. The German FM Christof Sielecki makes youtube lectures, freely available. He said:

“The authors invested an enormous amount of time. The amount of novelties and really astonishing ideas presented here can only mean that they invested hundreds of hours to make this an interesting and really fighting choice.”

But to get his excitement you really need to listen to the 30 minute lecture (which also explains some details from the book and some we shamefully omitted about move orders).

There was also a nice review in German (you are one like away if you go here) and a nice review on ChessCafe where the only criticism I could find (and you do look for them when you “only” get 5/6 in the review!) was that the book was irrelevant to players under 1400. As most opening books are, I don’t really care for this.

However, the best review of all was from Arne Moll, the notoriously harsh ChessVibes reviewer (which is why we love him. People like Elburg that loves all books are nice people, but don’t guide the customer in a meaningful way, we think). He said among other tings:

“The two authors… present so many fresh and fascinating ideas in this old opening that it’s impossible to put down. It’s also a very objective and sensible book, in which the old opening is both treated with respect and is challenged to defend itself against computer-age scrutiny and rigour.

I could go on and on about the many beautiful variations in this book, but the truth is that it is crammed with fantastic stuff – really too much to mention in one review. So let me just say that the authors treat the ever-important Timman Variation (9.dxc5 Bxc5 10.Bg5 d4 11.Bxf6 Qxf6 12.Nd5) with due adoration and skepticism (I’ve always felt the line to be both overestimated and underestimated at the same time!). Here, too, they improve existing theory as they go along in many crucial lines.”

The full review is very well written and gives an honest image of our book from someone who likes it. If you are wondering if you want to read the book (or even pay good money for it!) please read this first.

Recently a reader wrote to me and mentioned that the same position was considered two different places in The Tarrasch Defence, with slightly different annotations. The suggestion was in both cases not to play like this, but it was still an interesting point. No matter how obsessively you work, you cannot avoid mistakes.

Similarly at some point in Delchev’s new book on the Reti he writes the following: “It is true that Mihail Marin has spent tons of ink on it in his The English Opening, Volume 2, but in fact his work has hardly advanced theory any further.” Harsh words, but apparently he did not like this lines in this specific variation. We have heard different feedback from 2700+ (sometimes ++) players about the Marin books, but maybe not all chapters were equally strong?

Or is this what happens when your editor is only 13 years old? (By the way, Happy Birthday Semko!)

No. Writing chess books is just damn hard. What you think might be interesting is routinely trashed by the readers. No matter how much work you put into your work and how obsessively you look for mistakes, they will always be there. Sometimes it is a harmless transposition to a note that is missed as above, but you are not always this lucky.

We all remember this blog post (?!).

Well, Vitiugov is back with a new edition of his book on the French, probably a combination of end of the line for the first print and a lot of serious work. I have been browsing in the book for the two days I have had it (thank you for the freebie Semko!) and find it a really interesting book worth the money several times over.

This does not mean that I am not going to get my “revenge” for the remark on the Marin book.

In the line starting with:

1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. e5 Nfd7 5. f4 c5 6. Nf3 Nc6 7. Be3 Qb6 8. Na4 Qa5+ 9. c3 cxd4 10. b4 Nxb4 11. cxb4 Bxb4+ 12. Bd2 Bxd2+ 13. Nxd2 O-O 14. Bd3 b5 15. Nb2 Nb6 16. O-O Nc4 17. Nbxc4

17…dxc4

Vitiugov claims that the theoretical debates have recently centred around this move. I am not sure what went wrong for him. Maybe he wrote the moves down in Word and did not check the moves with a chess board or program. It only took me two seconds to see that this is completely wrong when looking at the diagram in the book and the variation he gave. But being not too overconfident, I checked with a computer (and database!) and confirmed that this is not playable.

More and more games are played (as well as becoming available) after:

17… bxc4 18. Bxh7+ Kxh7 19. Qh5+ Kg8 20.Nf3 g6 21. Qh6 Qc7 22. f5 f6

(22… exf5 23. Rae1 is totally toast, I think. 5-0 in the database. Most recently: 23…f6 24. exf6 Qh7 25. Qf4 Qf7 26. Re7 Qxf6 27. Rfe1 Rf7 28. Rxf7 Kxf7 29. Ng5+ Kg7 30. Qc7+ Kh6 31. Qh7+ Kxg5 32. g3 1-0 Zherebukh – Jaiswal, New Delhi 2011.)

23. fxg6 Qg7 24. Qh4, when I do not believe in the Black position at all. 24…Qh8 25. Qxd4 Ba6 26. Nh4

(26. Qc3 Rae8 27. Nd4 f5 28. Rae1 White has a big advantage. 28…f4 29. Rf3 Qh4 30. Qa5 c3 31. Qxc3 Bc4 32. Kh1 Re7 33. Qb4 1-0 Colin – Haraldsson, ICCF 2010)

26… f5

(26… fxe5 27. Qg4 Rfe8 28. Rf7 with a winning attack.)

27.Nxf5 led to a winning attack in Avotins – Hladecek, e-mail 2009.

18.Bxh7+ Kxh7 19. Qh5+ Kg8

Here Vitiugov only gives 20.Nf3, failing to spot the reason why White is eager to take on c4 on move 17.

20. Ne4! Rd8

20… f6 21. Nxf6+! 1-0 Secer – Gurcan, Konya 2010. White wins after: 21…Rxf6

(21…gxf6 22. Qg6+ Kh8 23. Rf3 is mate.)

22. exf6 Bb7 23. f7+ Kf8 24. Rae1 Bd5

(24… Qxa2 25. Rf2 Qa6 26. f5)

25. f5 Qxa2 26. Re2

21. Ng5 An obvious novelty.

21. Rf3 d3 22. Rh3 Kf8 23. Qg5 Qb6+ 24. Kh1 Ke8 25. Qxg7 Qd4 was not completely clear in Bulatov – Yuzhakov, Kurgan 2010, and Black escaped with a draw.

21… Qc7 22. f5 exf5 23. Qh7+ Kf8 24. Qh8+ Ke7 25. Qxg7 White is evidently winning.

25…Rf8

25… Re8 26. Qxf7+ Kd8 27. Qd5+ Qd7 28. Qxa8 with an extra rook and limited counterplay.

26. e6 Qc5 27. Rae1 d3+ 28. Kh1 d2 29. Re5

If this was a game, 1-0 would be the next text.

If you are at all interested in these two books, please get them from your nearest chess supplier. But don’t forget that Quality Chess gets the last word and the last laugh!

This publishing schedule is focusing on the immediate future. Things like my training books and the Judit Polgar books are still coming out this year, but right now this is what we are focusing on.

Positional Chess Sacrifices by Mihai Suba is in its final phase of editing. At the same time we are near the conclusion of the Alterman Gambit Guide series. The final volume, Black Gambits 2 is typeset and at the moment going through the final checks. According to the editor, it is the best in the series. The German edition is coming more or less at the same time. The translator has been working day and night to ensure that we will have the final files on next Friday.

Suba	Positional Chess Sacrifices	April
Boris Alterman	Alterman Gambit Guide – Black Gambits 2	April
Boris Alterman	Alterman Gambit-Handbuch: Gambits mit Schwarz 2	April
John Shaw	The King’s Gambit	May
Artur Yusupov	Chess Evolution 2	May
Boris Avrukh	Grandmaster Repertoire X – Beating 1.d4 Sidelines	Summer
Lars Schandorff	Playing 1.d4 – The Queen’s Gambit	Summer
Lars Schandorff	Playing 1.d4 – The Indian Defences	Summer
Jacob Aagaard	Attacking Manual 1 – in German	Summer
Ftacnik	GM6a	Summer
Ftacnik	GM6b	Summer
John Shaw	Playing 1.e4 – Sicilian & French	Summer
John Shaw	Playing 1.e4 – Caro-Kann, 1…e5 and Minor Lines	Summer
Marc Esserman	Mayhem in the Morra	Summer

John just walked over and said – “yeah, I will have to read that (seeing this headline), I never really got that. Is positional short term and strategic long term?”Now he has wondered off again, not really interested! Ah, the lack of ambition for a has-been (said only to spite – I have to be bitter now he is the boss and have no time to read the blog anymore!).

Here are some (reducted) disctionary definitions to help us a bit along:

strat·e·gy – noun, plural -gies.

1. the science or art of combining and employing the means of war in planning and directing large military movements and operations.
Origin: 1680–90;  < Greek stratēgía  generalship, equivalent to stratēg ( ós ) military commander, general ( strat ( ós ) army + -ēgos  noun derivative of ágein  to lead)

po·si·tion – [puh-zish-uhn]
1. a place occupied or to be occupied; site: a fortified position.

A positional decision is in my definition: A small decision that reacts to the piece placement or pawn structure with immediate effect. A result is 15.Ne2 below, which is poor piece placement (neglecting development) and 13.e4, which weakens the f4-square

Strategy is more than basic understanding of piece and pawn placement, more than just good square and weak pawn. Strategy is positional elements in dynamic action. Say 11.g5 in the game below. Positionally this move is fine. White gets a decent pawn structure (although we could argue if he should give up the control of f5 already – but again this is a strategic issue), but he loses some flexibility and Black is able to block the h4-h5 advance. Black’s reply 11…Nh5 is anti-positional. The knight looks silly there (and is only allowed back in by 13.e4?!), but it has a strategic purpose of blocking the white play on the kingside. Basically, Black is deciding on what elements that will be most important long term.

Here are my quick notes to the game put on the blog yesterday. The summary is that white is making a lot of positional mistakes, through poor handling of the pawn structure and not developing and activating his pieces. Black is playing safe chess and making reasonable decisions all along. Once White starts to play badly Black is not in need of a strategy. He does not need to outplay his opponent with deep play, but instead just hits ground strokes from the back line, seeing his opponent running around like a headless chicken.

I mean this with no offence to the white player – I was no better once upon a time. What I can say is that the training book that will help you will soon be available – maybe the 31st of July!

A final note before moving on to the game. In modern chess we see less and less strategy and more and more basic positional chess. The reason for this is mainly the reduction of time the players have. But look at a game like Giri-Aronian, where Black’s long term manouevres killed his opponent completely. This game was deep with strategic choices. The computer will not like them all, but in some cases the machine will just be wrong. The human is still ahead when looking at long term factors. There is a position Marin showed to me a few days ago for his next book. It was quite deep and in his analysis winning for Black. I toyed with it with the machine for 5-10 minutes and found no engine that would give me an evaluation oover 0.20 in either direction, almost no matter how I moved the pieces around. A typical example of deep positional evaluation – while the way to win the game would be through deep strategic play…

<a href=”#comment-4694”>@Patrick M </a>

1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.e3 Bf5
4…Bg4 5.Nc3 e6 6.Qb3 Qb6 7.Nh4 Bh5 8.h3 is an Avrukh main line, which since has been played 100s of times.
5.Nc3 e6 6.Nh4 Bg4?!
This mixes up two ideas and leads to an inferior position.
7.Qb3 Qb6 8.h3 Bh5 9.g4
White is a tempo up on the Avrukh line and should be said to have won the opening battle, but certainly not the game!
9…Bg6 10.Nxg6 hxg6 11.g5?!
11.Bg2 is a bit more flexible and would be my choice, but the text move is the favourite of the computer.; 11.Be2 is not liked by R4, but would probably be my choice over the board. I want to play h4-h5 and when gxh5 comes, I want to play g5 and ¦xh5. This is just a plan and probably not best. I am just sharing my spur of the moment thoughts.
11…Nh5
The knight cannot easily re-join the game here, but white also no longer has any h4-h5 plans. This is one reason I would not have advanced the g-pawn too early. It loses flexibility.
12.c5?!
Again I don’t like this move. It was better to keep the options open with 12.Bd2
12…Qc7 13.e4?!
White is neglecting his development – and weakening the f4-square.
13…Nd7 14.exd5 exd5 15.Ne2?!
Finally White is losing it. When are the pieces supposed to get out. The position might still be equal, but Black has taken over the initiative with his next move.
15…b6! 16.Qe3+?
Who does this check help?
16…Be7 17.b4?!
Creates another aim for the black attack. White is handling his pawns awfully.
17.cxb6 axb6 18.Bd2 was more prudent. A typical positional idea here is: What is the worst placed piece? For Black it is the king, but castling is not easy. So we need to protect the bishop. This can be done with two ideas. …b5 and …Nb6 or …Nf8-e6. Our other positional question – where are the weaknesses? – would help us decide there. The knight should be at e6 to target d4 and f4 as well as prepare …c5. On the other hand the advance of the b-pawn would ruin the flexibility of the black pawns and make c6 a weakness. R4 is not much help here. After some minutes it is still rating …Qd6 and the two other options within 0.07 of each other, all with even chances. In reality …Nf8! should be the best move for positional reasons, and the position already greatly in Black’s favour.
17…a5!
Black is better. White’s pawn structure is falling apart.
18.b5 bxc5 19.bxc6?!
19.Bg2 was better. White should white clarify the situation in the centre? 19…cxb5?! 20.Nc3! Nb6 21.0–0 would give White some activity and a chance to fight for equality.
19…Qxc6 20.Ba3?!
20.Bg2 was better, but Black has a clear advantage already. Note that White is made a fool off after 20…0–0! because of 21.Qxe7? Rae8, trapping the queen.
20…Qe6!
Black is now a pawn up and White’s position is falling apart.
21.Bg2 cxd4!?
Objectively this is the best move, but Black would have been better off playing safe with 21…Qxe3 22.fxe3 Bxg5 23.Bxd5 Rc8 and Black should win with his extra pawn.
22.Qxe6?!
This enters a plea of no-contest.  22.Qxd4! would have caused Black to play accurately to keep his advantage. 22…Bxa3! 23.Bxd5 Ne5!! (23…Qa6?! 24.Qe4+ Kd8 25.Bxa8 Re8 26.Bb7 Qd6! and …Nf4 is also better for Black, but not to the same extent.) 24.Bxa8 (24.Qe4 f5 25.gxf6 Nxf6 26.Qa4+ Qd7 27.Qxd7+ Kxd7 28.Bxa8 Rxa8 and Black should win) 24…Bb2 25.Qd5 Bxa1 and Black should win, although the game is not fully over.
22…fxe6 23.Bxe7 Kxe7 24.Nxd4 Nf4 25.Bf1 e5
Black is just winning.
26.Nf3 Rab8 27.Rd1 Rhc8 28.a4 Rb2 29.Bb5 Rcc2 30.Nd2 Nc5 31.h4 Ncd3+ 32.Bxd3 Nxd3+ 33.Ke2 Nxf2 34.Kxf2 Rxd2+
Black won.

 

We had a editorial meeting Wednesday and I suggested, based on the likely spring publication of Playing 1.d4 vol. 1+2 and Playing 1.e4 vol. 1+2 that maybe my immediate attention should be to complete my quite advanced work on my four training books. As a starting point my personal goal will be for these books to be finished for publication on the 31st of July – which indeed is my birthday.

I have worked hard on these books for many years by now and have used them extensively with pupils and friends, some of them already solidly anchored at the top of the rating system and others on their way there. My most consistent cooperation has been with Sabino Brunello from Italy. When we started working Sabino was about to get the IM title. Yesterday he passed the 2600 mark in live rating for the first time and as I am writing he has an advantage against Nigel Short. I am hedging my bets by writing this before things might turn! Anyway, here is his great performance from yesterday:

(board 9) Sargissian,Gabriel (2683) – Brunello,Sabino (2581) [A00]
Gibraltar Chess Festival 2012, 26.01.2012

 

1.Nf3 d5 2.d4 Nf6 3.c4 c6 4.e3 Bf5 5.Nc3 e6 6.Nh4 Bg6 7.Nxg6 hxg6 8.Bd3 Nbd7 9.0-0 Bd6 10.h3 Qe7 11.c5 Bc7 12.f4 Ng8 13.b4 a6 14.e4 dxe4 15.Nxe4 Ndf6 16.Ng5 Qd7 17.Bc4 Ne7 18.Be3 Nf5 19.Qd3 Rd8 20.Rad1 Nd5 21.Bxd5 Qxd5 22.a4 0-0 23.Nf3 Ng3 24.Rfe1 Qf5 25.Qxf5 Nxf5 26.Kf2 Rd5 27.g4 Ne7 28.Rb1 Rd7 29.Ne5 Bxe5 30.fxe5 Nd5 31.Bd2 f5 32.exf6 Nxf6 33.Ke3 Rfd8 34.Bc3 Nd5+ 35.Kd3 Nxc3 36.Kxc3 Rxd4 37.b5 R4d5 38.Kb4 axb5 39.axb5 e5 40.Ra1 cxb5 41.Kxb5 Rc8 42.Rac1 Kf7 43.Rc2 Ke6 44.h4 Ra8 45.h5 Ra3 46.hxg6 Rd4 47.Kb6 Rb4+ 48.Kc7 Ra6 49.g5 Rc6+ 50.Kb8 Kf5 51.Rf1+ Kxg6 52.Rd1 Kxg5 53.Rd6 e4 54.Rxc6 bxc6+ 55.Kc7 e3 56.Kxc6 Kf4 57.Kd5 Kf3 58.c6 Rb8 59.c7 Rc8 60.Rc3 Kf2 61.Rc4 g5 62.Rc6 e2 63.Rf6+ Ke3 0-1