Quality Chess Blog

In comments to this blog, a review critical of “Playing the Trompowsky” was linked. IM Richard Pert asked for the right to respond. If “everyone is entitled to an opinion” then that must include the author, so I will let Richard take it from here:

Firstly I want to say “thank you” to the many readers who have shown support for my first book, which I have written on the Trompowsky. I put a lot of time into my analysis, and my efforts combined with the hard work of the Quality Chess team has, in my opinion, produced a book to be proud of.

Unfortunately there will always be people who like to criticize, and this time it’s the turn of Mr Martin Rieger. I don’t know who Mr Rieger is; I’ve never heard of him before, but since he has criticized my work I am keen to respond.

My book aims to provide a practical repertoire. Deep analysis is mostly saved for the critical lines, while new positions with a small advantage for White are talked about in more general terms. There will come a point in every game where you have to think for yourself, and my book focuses on what you need to know to get an advantage/promising position, rather than producing a 1000-page manual which is impossible to memorize.

I will, in passing, point out that Mr Rieger makes no mention whatsoever of the numerous improvements I provided for White in several of the critical main lines. Instead he has picked out a handful of mostly non-critical lines, then added some of his own non-critical analysis and proceeded to rubbish my book. I don’t want to get into a slanging match with Mr Rieger and I can’t speak German, so I don’t know exactly what he is saying, although I can get the gist of it with an online translator.

I will respond to the two examples that Mr Rieger emphasizes the most in his analysis. His opening point concerns the following line:
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Dear Quality Chess reader,

Today is the 40th birthday of GM Jacob Aagaard, my friend and business partner. Happy Birthday Jacob!

To business – six new Quality Chess books were made available this past month.

The King’s Gambit (by me) made its long-awaited appearance. Five years of analysis resulted in 680 pages of fun-filled lines. Early reactions, I must admit, have been highly favourable.

Another monster of a book is Kotronias on the King’s Indian: Fianchetto Systems by Vassilios Kotronias. The Greek GM is one of the world’s leading theoreticians with particular expertise in the KID. This book not only contains wonderful opening analysis but also guidance on how to play the resulting middlegame positions.

Playing the Trompowsky by Richard Pert does not require such heavy lifting. The English IM, a Trompowsky expert, supplies a practical attacking repertoire with 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5. Other 2.Bg5 lines are also covered against 1…f5 and 1…d5.

The remaining three books are from Jacob’s Grandmaster Preparation series: Calculation, Positional Play and Strategic Play are published in paperback. Previously they had been available only in hardcover.

The chess files (in pgn and pdf) cover many topics, including an improvement by GM Boris Avrukh on his original analysis in Grandmaster Repertoire 11 – Beating 1.d4 Sidelines.

Regards,

John Shaw

Chief Editor

Quality Chess

Today is Jacob’s 40th birthday. To celebrate, everyone in the office went out to an excellent steakhouse for lunch and had a couple of drinks. Productivity in the afternoon may have dipped.

The article below is translated from today’s issue of Politiken – a leading Danish newspaper.

Grandmaster Jacob Aagaard – 40 today and entirely on top
He was recently awarded the last of the four big Book of the Year awards and is the first player in the World to have them all. Jacob can also brag about having the highest trainer title, FIDE Senior Trainer. Quality Chess, of which Jacob is a co-founder, is the World’s leading chess publisher; not the least because of Jacob’s diligence, enthusiasm and great capacity.

Jacob is simply put, one of the leading people in the fields of chess literature and chess training and we are very grateful that he at the moment is a (great) trainer for the Danish elite. In other words: everything is on track for the Scottish Dane. But it was not always like that.

Jacob had a rough start in life; in his youth he had a sensitive and restless mind, which made it difficult to translate the obvious talent into results. His play went from sublime to horrible and it was more the inner demons than lack of ability which were to blame for him only reaching the IM-title in his mid-20s. From then on it took another ten years before Jacob could put GM on his business card.

Meanwhile he wrote a lot of chess books and trained a lot of people. In 2007 he finally broke through and got the GM-title and won the British Championship. He has also won the Scottish Championship and is currently the Danish Blitz Champion.

In a memorable Scottish wedding in 2004 Jacob replaced Denmark with Scotland and said ‘YES’ to Anne. They still live in Glasgow and have two girls, Cathy and Rebecca, aged 5 and 4. For a few years Jacob played for Scotland, but luckily he is back in Denmark now.

Jacob has written more than 20 chess books. The major works are Attacking Manual 1&2 as well as the current series Grandmaster Preparation, which looks like it is going to be the training bible of the future. Jacob manages to entertain and be funny, as well as to keep a high instructional level. A merciless inner drive combined with the ability to grow with the challenge has been with Aagaard throughout his life. He has not yet peaked; though it will be difficult to achieve more within the fields of chess training and chess literature.

GM Sune Berg Hansen, Politiken 31.07.2013

Solid proof that The King’s Gambit exists. Click to see a larger version and marvel at the concentration of my hard-working colleagues.
 
So the jinx is over? Not quite. Not all the books due to arrive in Glasgow actually arrived. We asked the delivery man why not. “Perhaps the other books were on a different flight and were delayed by the thunderstorm.”

Later this summer we shall publish a book by Swedish IM Axel Smith called Pump Up Your Rating. Axel is also writing a related blog called Pump Up Your Rating at the following link. That blog is not controlled by Quality Chess, so it will be up to Axel what he writes about, but I suspect chess improvement will be a recurring theme.

I have read the first draft of Axel’s book and I am delighted with how it is shaping up, but then I would say that, wouldn’t I?

Dear Quality Chess Reader,

All modesty aside, we must announce another Quality Chess prize winner – in fact a 1-2. Jacob Aagaard won the Association of Chess Professionals’ 2013 Book of the Year prize for Grandmaster Preparation: Calculation. In second place, just one vote behind, was How I Beat Fischer’s Record by Judit Polgar. My personal congratulations to both authors.

This award means that Jacob is the chess author who has won the most prizes – ACP, ECF, Boleslavsky, ChessCafe and Guardian. It was close with Mark Dvoretsky and John Nunn before, but Jacob now has his nose in front.

In a supersized chess file (pdf or pgn) there are many games from the Danish Championship and Danish Blitz Championship, plus analysis that updates and adds to Grandmaster Repertoire 12: The Modern Benoni. The new Danish Champion is GM Davor Palo, but who is their new Blitz Champion? It was another prize for GM Jacob Aagaard.

Regards,

John Shaw

Chief Editor

Quality Chess

Dear Quality Chess reader,

On Friday 15th March we published three new books.

Grandmaster Repertoire 12: The Modern Benoni by Marian Petrov provides a complete repertoire for Black after 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 e6. The repertoire is sharp and ambitious but not overwhelming in the demands it places on Black’s memory.

Strategic Play is the third in Jacob’s Grandmaster Preparation series. The chess is challenging and instructive with plenty of exercises to stretch your understanding. On a shallower note, Strategic Play has my favourite cover of all the books we have published.

Soviet Middlegame Technique by Peter Romanovsky is the latest in our Classics series. It is a fresh translation of what were originally two books – one on planning and the other on combinations. I prefer others to write our sales text for us, so GM Kotov on Romanovsky: “One of the best books in the world’s chess literature.”

Sales news: on our site we have a new range of special offers. The webpage shows Read more…

Dear Quality Chess reader,

Happy New Year to all our chess friends.

At the end of this month we will publish four books.

Chess Evolution 3: Mastery concludes Artur Yusupov’s 9-book educational series. I cannot recommend this series strongly enough for any chess player who wishes to improve. Of course I am biased, but this is universally regarded as a magnificent series. FIDE agreed and awarded Artur the Boleslavsky prize for best instructional books.

Grandmaster Repertoire 13: The Open Spanish by Victor Mikhalevski supplies Black with a complete active repertoire after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6. The Israeli GM is a world-renowned opening expert, and has played the Open Spanish all his life, so he is the ideal author for this topic.

Attentive readers may spot we have jumped from GM 11 to GM 13. Not to worry – we will publish Grandmaster Repertoire 12: The Modern Benoni next month.

The final two books published on January 31st are the German editions of Jacob’s award-winning Attacking Manuals: Angriffslektionen 1 and Angriffslektionen 2.

Now from books to prizes: the ChessCafe Book of the Year prize is decided by an email vote to info@chesscafe.com by the public – voting is open now and ends on January 21st. There are three books in the final, one of which is Grandmaster Preparation: Calculation by Jacob Aagaard. I would never try to tell our readers which book to vote for – vote for your favourite!

The games section this month (pdf or pgn) contains, among other things, a few of my efforts from the Open section of December’s London Classic. They are offered as entertainment rather than for any educational value. I used to be better than this – honest. For any readers of Christian Bauer’s Play the Scandinavian more important is the correction of a chess typo.

Regards,

John Shaw

Chief Editor

Quality Chess