… but at least this one is Danish! The winner of the ChessCafe.com Book of the Year award 2012 was definitely the right choice of the three nominees (I still like Judit’s book best, but that is just one opinion!).
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
We are happy to announce that Advanced Chess Tactics by GM Lev Psakhis has made the shortlist for the English Chess Federation Book of the Year prize.
Actually this news was announced over a week ago, but we are still catching up after the Olympiad. What else have I missed?
FIDE, the World Chess Federation, has just announced the results of their Trainer Awards for 2011. There are awards for best trainer in various categories, but the category that interests us most is the Boleslavsky Medal for Best Author. This year it was won by Jacob Aagaard. So well done Jacob. And well done us.
In recent days Jacob has become Scottish Champion and won the Boleslavsky Medal. Such things normally come in threes. What next? I will note that the Olympics start in a few days…
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.
After a tough fight, Boris Avrukh’s Grandmaster Repertoire 2 won the public vote for the ChessPublishing Book of the Year prize. Congratulations to Boris and thanks to all those who voted.
Last year the first volume of Mihail Marin’s 1.c4 GM Repertoire won this prize, so ChessPublishing regulars clearly have excellent taste. Next year we shall attempt to three-peat.
The Award Season is truly upon us. After the ECF, Guardian Book and ChessCafe of the Year awards, it is now time for the biggest one of them all, the ChessPublishing Opening Book of the Year.
The ChessCafe website has a very democratic approach to deciding its Book of the Year prize: readers e-mail their votes for their favourite book of 2010. Three Quality Chess books are on the list of nominees – The Attacking Manual 1 and The Attacking Manual 2 by Jacob Aagaard, and Boost Your Chess 1 by Artur Yusupov.
Anyone who wishes to vote for any of the nominated books (even, good grief, one not published by Quality Chess) should e-mail their vote to bookoftheyear@chesscafe.com by January 17. After that the three highest placed books face a second round of voting from January 19 to 31. The winner will be announced on February 2.
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