Quality Chess Blog

The company which runs the servers for our website and e-mails tells us we have had intermittent server outages during the past week. It is possible e-mails we have sent have not been received. Or maybe e-mails you sent to us have not reached us. It’s all a mystery. Apologies if there are any resulting mix-ups. This is beyond our control, but we shall sort it out as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, Andrew is back from the British Championship. No GM norm and he was rather off-form early on, but a storming finish got Andrew into the prizes at 3rd=.

Jacob returns today from the Politiken Cup in Copenhagen. In the Danish league Jacob is a team-mate of our author GM Lars Schandorff. Jacob and Lars had agreed that the team’s board order would be decided by their Tournament Performance Rating in the Politiken Cup. Lars 2478, Jacob 2479.  A clear victory.

I am away from the office playing in the Politiken Cup (4/5 so far). But here is a current estimate of when the various books will be available, and the order I expect them to come out.

The Scottish Championship concluded on Saturday in Hamilton. Our IM Andrew Greet was first on a very fine 7.5/9 while GM John Shaw (that would be me) finished a half point behind. So Andrew is Scottish Champion? Maybe. He was certainly awarded the trophy at the prize giving, but was he eligible? He is extremely English and has lived in Scotland for less than two years, so although he could play in the event (it was an international open) maybe the organisers gave him my nice shiny silver cup. The organisers are currently reading the rulebook rather closely…

The key game of the event was in Round 3 when Andrew Greet crushed me very efficiently. But let’s forget about that. In the previous round I won a sacrificial game against Andrew’s near namesake Andrew Green, so that’s the game to look at.

J. Shaw – A. Green, Scottish Championship 2010

1.e4 Nf6 2.e5 Nd5 3.d4 d6 4.Nf3 dxe5 5.Nxe5 c6 6.Nd2 Nd7 7.Ndf3 g6 8.Bc4 Bg7 9.0–0 0–0 10.Re1 Nxe5 11.dxe5

I thought 11.Nxe5 Be6 looked very solid for Black; in fact it turns out to be the main line.

11…Bg4 12.h3 Bxf3 13.Qxf3 e6 14.a4 Qc7 15.Qe4 Rfd8 16.h4 Rd7 17.h5 Ne7

Perhaps 17…Qd8 to stop Bg5.

18.Bg5 c5 19.c3 Nc6 20.hxg6 hxg6 21.Bf6 Na5

22.Bxe6!!

A rather obvious sac to analyse, but I took some time to convince myself that it was sound.

22…fxe6 23.Qxg6

The plan is a rook lift to e3 (or e4) and then turn right to the g- or h-file. It seems a little slow, but Black cannot arrange a defence.

23…Qc6

Black had too many defensive tries for me to analyse them all before sacrificing. A couple of fun lines are:

23…Nb3 24.Re3!? Nxa1 25.Rh3 and White wins.

23…Nc6 24.Re3 Rf7 25.Rh3 Ne7 26.Rh8+! Kxh8 27.Qxf7 Bxf6 28.Qxf6+ Kh7 29.Qf7+ Kh8 30.c4! And Ra3-h3 is a good swinger.

24.Re3 Rf8 25.Rh3 Rc8

After 25…Rff7 I planned Bxg7 when Black cannot recapture due to mate on e8, but also good is 26.Qh7+ Kf8 27.Qh8+ Bxh8 28.Rxh8#.

26.Qh7+ Kf8 27.Rg3

Black resigned, as mate is unavoidable.

We are delighted that IM Andrew Greet recently made his first GM norm after countless years of trying – two more norms are needed for the title. Andrew has worked for Quality Chess for a year, so we claim editing and reading our books is the key to success.

In the last few days we have sent two books to the printer. Grandmaster Repertoire 7 : The Caro-Kann by Lars Schandorff and Soviet Chess Strategy by Alexey Suetin. Continuing our recent experiment,  we are printing some in hardcover – 200 Caro, 100 Soviet. They will be available from us, various chess shops in Europe, and Chess4Less in the US. Some people have requested a photo of our hardcover versions. I’m not sure you can feel the quality from a photo, but here is Jacob’s snap of a hardcover Cutting Edge:

The next two books in line are Grandmaster Repertoire 6: The Sicilian Defence by Lubomir Ftacnik and The Quality Chess Puzzle Book, allegedly by me.

Publication Schedule

Suetin
Soviet Chess Strategy
28 May 2010

Lars Schandorff
Grandmaster Repertoire 7 – The Caro-Kann
28 May 2010

Lubomir Ftacnik
Grandmaster Repertoire 6 – The Sicilian Defence
June

John Shaw
Quality Chess Puzzle Book
June

Christian Bauer
Play the Scandinavian
June

Artur Yusupov
Boost your Chess 2
June

Mihail Marin
Grandmaster Repertoire 4 – The English Opening vol. 2
July

Mihail Marin
Grandmaster Repertoire 5 – The English Opening vol. 3
July

Tibor Karolyi
Karpov’s Strategic Wins: Volume 1 – 1961-1985
August

Tibor Karolyi
Karpov’s Strategic Wins: Volume 2 – 1986 – 2009
August

John Shaw
The King’s Gambit
LATER

Boris Avrukh
GM Repertoire 8 – The Grunfeld Defence
LATER

Milos Pavlovic
The Cutting Edge 2 – The Najdorf Sicilian
LATER

Tiger Hillarp Persson
Middlegame book – TITLE NOT CONFIRMED
LATER

Mihail Marin
Common Grandmaster Mistakes – and how to avoid them
LATER

Artur Yusupov
Boost your Chess 3
LATER

Vassilios Kotronias
Middlegame book – TITLE NOT CONFIRMED
LATER

Jacob Aagaard
Grandmaster Repertoire x1 – 1.e4 – Ruy Lopez
NEXT YEAR

Jacob Aagaard
Grandmaster Repertoire x2 – 1.e4 – Sicilian
NEXT YEAR

Jacob Aagaard
Grandmaster Repertoire x3 – 1.e4 – French/Caro-Kann
NEXT YEAR

Jacob Aagaard
Grandmaster Repertoire x4 – 1.e4 other e5s
NEXT YEAR

Jacob Aagaard
Thinking Inside the Box
NEXT YEAR

Jacob Aagaard
Train your Chess Intuition
NEXT YEAR

Grandmaster Boris Avrukh – author of the highly successful books 1.d4 vol. 1 & 1.d4 vol. 2 will visit the blog, tomorrow, Tuesday. He will be happy to answer any general questions you might have, about chess, his books and so on. The only thing I have been asked is not to come with anything he needs to analyse, as this is supposed to be light and fun.

At times I am asked if strong GMs ever read books. The case with some of them is no. One GM I talked to this about a few years back said that he had not opened a chess book for 10 years and that they were all junk. I gave him Marin’s two books on 1.e4 e5, Beating the Open Games and A Spanish Repertoire for Black to see if he would change his mind. He did, and is now a regular customer, especially for Marin books…

It seems we have another fan. Hannes Stefansson apparently gave an interview (in Icelandic), explaining how he used his newly acquired copy of Beating the Open Games to beat French GM Nataf. I have annotated the game and stuck it in a pgn-file.

With temperatures of -21.6 in Scotland it is clear that Winter has hit our small nation hard, not to speak of the Quality Chess office. We have several times struggled to find our way home. On Tuesday Jacob spent 15 minutes in a queue of 52 people (and time to count it) to buy his ticket home. Wednesday he was wise enough to buy it at 1pm. However, at 5.28 pm, when he was at the platform, all trains going West out of Glasgow were cancelled. He went to the ticket booth to get a refund, but was there (after waiting 10 min. in the queue) told that the train was at the platform. He ran down. The train doors were closed. Ran all the way up to the driver (50 metres?). The driver looked at him and took off. Back up to the booth. Wait in line? Not a chance, jumped the queue. Was refused a refund as the ticket had been purchased more than one hour previously! Thought about killing someone when a superior stepped in and authorised the refund. Went for the bus, never showed. A later one did. 10 km in 150 min. Can’t you walk this faster?

Oh yeah, and the office is bloody cold too.

We are delighted to announce that Artur Yusupov has won the prestigious Boleslavsky Medal for his series Build up your Chess. This prize is awarded by FIDE, the World Chess Federation, to the best instructional book (it is also open to computer software or articles).

Winning a worldwide prize is remarkable, but the standard of the competition makes it even better: 2nd place was awarded to Garry Kasparov and 3rd was Mark Dvoretsky.

The full announcement can be seen at the FIDE website