Quality Chess Blog

Tuesday we finally changed website provider, giving us a chance to change some information on the site that had grown old – as for example expected publishing dates.

This also brings about the chance for creating a newsletter again, something we have been missing for a while. We would use this to announce our new books a few weeks before publication mainly, so I have created this new category on the blog to keep the readers up to date with out progress.

At the moment we have fixed dates on Frage der Moderne Schachteori and Grossmeister Repertoire 1 – Band Eins, translations of the books published in English by Lipnitsky and Avrukh, now spelled Lipnitzky and Awruch. We will have the books in our warehouse on the 24th of June. There is a slight delay at the printer because of summer catalouges, so this is the fastest they could do.

However, they hope to be ready to print our soon forthcoming titles in English faster. We are talking about Build up Your Chess 3 by Artur Yusupov and Attacking the Spanish by Sabino Brunello first of all. I think these will be out 2 weeks later, meaning the 8th of July – but I want to stress that this is not final by any means.

Later in the summer we will finish the following books:

(I will be revising the dates as we go along. These are not promises in any way!)

Mihail Marin: GM Repertoire 3 – The English Opening vol. 1

This book is basically written. I have been going over the manuscript and Mihail wants to add some new games to the book that he played over the last few weeks. Marin’s English is becoming very fluent and the corrections needed by the editors will be minimal. I am hoping we can prepare this book for printing in 3 weeks time already!

The book looks absolutely fantastic. Those who thing Avrukh started the series on a high level will not be disappointed.

Estimated publication date 22nd July

Volume 2 will be out in September or October.

Ftacnik, Kopec and Browne: Champions of the New Millennium

We have put a lot of work into this book. It will be big. I have typeset 8 chapters of the 18. John has finished the final editing in a few hours. The book will be typeset next week somewhere, will then go to proofreading and the printer.

Estimated publication date 22nd July

Tibor Karolyi: Genius in the Background

This is a profoundly different book, very interesting to edit and read. I am not sure it will be the most commercial of our books, but we don’t choose our books based on expected profits, but on what we want to work with.

Estimated publication date 29th July – but this is probably too optimistic 🙁

Jacob Aagaard: Attacking Manual 2

I am about 250 pages into AM2 and it keeps growing. So far it is 250 pages.The final book will be 6 chapters and 50 exercises. AM1 will be re-typeset and re-issued, with 3 extra games. The first book was ugly, but the content is worth saving.

Estimated publication date for both – September 2009

Boris Avrukh: GM Repertoire 2 – 1.d4 volume 2

Boris is quite far in the work on this book. It is bad news for supporters of bad gambits and has the same number of new ideas as in the first edition.

Estimated publication date – September 2009

In the recent Mitropa Cup Sabino Brunello seemed on his way to make his final GM-norm, but for some reason Italy did not field the strongest team in the 8th round, and Brunello was elevated from the 3rd to the 2nd board, and for this reason did not play a third grandmaster, which he would have done on board 3.

Either way, he won his games, beating a 2575, 2525 and 2550 player in the last three rounds. His performance in 2009 (39 games – 31.5 points) is now 2652. His elo is set to be 2550 on the next list, overtaking Michele Godena and becoming Italy’s number two, after Caruana.

But most importantly, his book Attacking the Spanish, is set to be out early in July. The editing is basically at an end and typesetting has begun. With the three weeks of turnover at the printer, we hope that the book will be out five weeks from now. We think it is really really good, but this will of course be for the critiques and readers to decide.

Jacob

Our Italian partner Caissa Italia has finished the translation of Boris Avrukh’s groundbreaking book “Grandmaster Repertoire 1 – 1.d4 volume one”. We are not sure exactly when the book will be out in Italian, but we are sure that it will not disappoint.

A german edition will be published by Quality Chess before too long as well.

Here is the cover for the Italian edition.

A few of the questions we received concerning the lines and omissions (how can you avoid omissions?) to Grandmaster Repertoire 1 – 1.d4 volume one, have been covered by Boris Avrukh in a pgn file, which can be found in the free e-books section.

Jacob Aagaard

Last night I was at a local production at the King’s Theatre in Glasgow of the musical CHESS together with my wife and her ABBA loving friends. The quality of the production was varied, with a few stunning performances. The story shows little understanding of the actual game, and draws on Fischer, Karpov and Korchnoi in equal amounts.

There were a few amazing moments for a chess player. One was when Max Euwe was left out of the song with all the world champions, another was when they actually played a game on stage.

Black started the game and the pieces looked to be incorrectly placed on the board, however, at one moment I realised that the white pieces were black and the black white.

The game they played before “Fischer” wiped the pieces of the board was: 1. e4 h5 2. Nh3 c6 3. Nf4 d5 4. Nxd5 cxd5 5. b4 Bg4 6. Be2 dxe4 7. Bxg4 hxg4 8.Qxg4 Nf6

Obviously, the match had to be postponed, and “Karpov” (who later defects and becomes “Korchnoi”) has to beg the world champion to continue, or the match would be void.

The only non-fictional element that at one time must have seemed amusing, was when the FIDE president and arbiter, changes the rules mid-way in the second match.

All in all, a travesty towards chess. Why do non-chess playing friends always think that you are interested in this sort of low level chess aspects?

Jacob Aagaard

We are still improving the website, which means that it is not working in perfect order. We are using a shareware program for the site, and it has certain limitations we are trying to get around. One of them is the ordering of the books on the site.

For instance, in the coming soon category the books coming soon is the first in the list, in the category, but the books on the front are the ones coming in some time. Not ideal, but harder to solve than one would have thought…

Jacob Aagaard

Today we got a bit of a surprise. The world’s best chess writer (in my opinion), Mihail Marin, has been writing a book on the English for us for some time.  He is actually a good bit over his deadline.

What he said today, is that besides the 128 pages on 1.c4 c6 I have already seen – he has written another 250 or so pages on 1.c4 e5.

As the English covers a good deal more than just these two lines, and because there are only so many pages you can have in a book before it becomes a brick, we have simply no choice.

The already announced book will be two volumes. It is slightly annoying, but we can survive. I hope the readers can forgive us. What was originally thought to be a quick 128 page book on a simple opening has become one of the most ambitious chess books of modern times.

It is widely recognised that Boris Avrukh started the GM Repertoire series with a bang. Now it seems that Marin will keep the level way up high.

I feel sorry for the poor guy who has to write the 1.e4 books (we are planning 3 at this moment, but this will maybe be 20?).

Jacob Aagaard

I am finally writing effectively on the Attacking Manual 2. As always when I begin on a new book, I was very low on confidence, but this has now shifted and I feel that I will be very happy about this book.
Hopefully I will be able to finish it so that it will be out at the end of April or start of May, together with a second edition of AM1.

Jacob Aagaard