Quality Chess Blog

It’s a continuing theme of Authors in Action. IM Sabino Brunello’s book Attacking the Spanish is nearly finished, so last week he played in the Italian Team Championship and scored 7/7. 100% is always impressive, but it’s incredible against a field that included two GMs and two IMs.

Sabino’s rating is well over 2500, so he just needs a third GM norm to claim the title. I am sure he will not have long to wait.

Jacob certainly deserves some of the credit as Sabino is one of his pupils. GM Lars Schandorff also contributed as the following game from Italy follows a line he recommended in Playing the Queen’s Gambit.

CIS 2009
White: S. Brunello
Black: Amato

John Shaw

Scottish GM Colin McNab won the recent Coulsdon GM tournament. His unbeaten score of 9/13 put him a point clear of his nearest rivals. Colin McNab is one of our regular proofreaders at Quality Chess, so we congratulate Colin while making the dubious claim that reading our books is entirely responsible for his success.

John Shaw

Our authors usually either start as our friends or end up that way, so we like to see them playing well:

Mihail Marin has just finished first equal in the Reykjavik Open, with his 1.c4 repertoire scoring heavily.

The April FIDE rating list shows Tiger Hillarp Persson as Sweden’s new Number 1 at a chunky 2618.

And, as I mentioned a few days ago, IM Sabino Brunello won his second GM norm a few weeks ago.

Congratulations to them all.

John Shaw