Quality Chess Blog

I have been working on the 2016 leaflet today. We had a few things we needed to sort out before I was able to make a first draft. The final draft will come when we have the final covers (at least most of them) ready to attach. It will go to the printer together with a few books being finished at the moment.

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Last week’s poll question was: Do you think your rating will go up or down in 2016? As the results below show, the winner was the most optimistic answer, just ahead of the slightly optimistic option.

Overall, about two-thirds were optimistic about their rating. Is that surprising? I don’t think so. I suspect our blog readers (and poll-clickers) are not a representative sample of all chessplayers. If you bother to go to a chess book blog, you probably are more optimistic and interested in improving your chess than most.

Later this week an interesting range of tournaments starts in Wijk aan Zee. The top event, the Tata Steel Masters, is a 14-player all-play-all that features almost half of the world’s Top 20, including Carlsen, Giri, Caruana, So, Karjakin, Ding Liren and Eljanov. Who will win Wijk aan Zee 2016? “Others” could include the likes of Mamedyarov, Adams, Navara and Wei Yi. You can see a full list of players here.

Too easy a question? Well, the last time we had a “Who will win…” question was about the London Classic, and Carlsen just edged out Aronian on the vote. And you were most impressed by Giri in 2015…

We are continuing our special offer – if you buy three books or more and live in the normal European Union zone (as defined by UPS – for example, they exclude some islands and remote areas) we will send you an extra book free. Recently the default option on the free book has been Positional Chess Sacrifices but we will change that now to CARLSEN’S ASSAULT ON THE THRONE by Kotronias and Logothetis.

But if you already have Carlsen’s Assault on the Throne, or would prefer a different free book, then send us an email with your order, asking to have it replaced with one of the following titles:

POSITIONAL CHESS SACRIFICES
GRANDMASTER VERSUS AMATEUR
GRANDMASTER BATTLE MANUAL
REGGIO EMILIA 2007/2008
TACTIMANIA
SAN LUIS 2005
ATTACKING THE SPANISH
CUTTING EDGE 1: THE OPEN SICILIAN
CUTTING EDGE 2: SICILIAN NAJDORF 6.Be3

We sent Vassilios Kotronias Grandmaster Repertoire 6A – Beating the Anti-Sicilians away to the printer a while ago. Despite the impending doom, commonly referred to as Christmas, the book will be out soon – 9th December to be exact (and a week before on Forward Chess as usual).

Andrew and Nikos are working around the clock, Andrew during the day and Nikos during the night. They are almost done with Playing 1.e4 e5 – A Classical Repertoire, which will be yet another repertoire book for Black based on the Breyer. It seems this is rather popular at the moment! We are hoping this will be the best of the lot, but the competition is stiff.

We are also quite close to finishing Yuri Razuvaev’s book in the classic series, Key Concepts of Gambit Play. It will not go to the printer that quickly though, as John will proofread it and he has to finish his own book first!

This is what we are doing right at the moment. A bit down the line, we will have Mikhalevski: Grandmaster Repertoire 19 – Beating Minor Openings, which will be the final numbered book in the GM Repertoire series, if we exclude A’s, B’s and so on. We will also get around to editing the final book in Tal’s Best Games series, The Invincible. We are working on other projects of course, such as Kotronias on the King’s Indian 4, with the series finishing with volume 5. And no, I will not go through the content of any of these books at this moment.

For a more detailed publishing schedule, maybe the future will provide!?

Today is the official publication day of Parimarjan Negi’s 1.e4 vs The Sicilian II.

In our terms, that means it’s the day the new books will arrive at specialist chess shops. Some websale customers will already have received their books. If you bought on our site and haven’t received your book yet, then it’s in the post. As ever, we will be interested to know what you think of the book.

Parimarjan was in action in a mixed-format match against Hou Yifan last week. The result was 11–7 to the Chinese star, but Parimarjan had his chances, and even lost one on time in a dead drawn position, after being winning earlier. The biggest gap was in Fischer Random, which was won 3.5–0.5 by Hou Yifan.

No opening prep can help in Fischer Random, but Parimarjan did put some ideas from his book into action in the other games, including the following line against a rare but clever variation of the Accelerated Dragon. The following is a blitz game so I shall not analyse it in depth.

Parimarjan Negi – Hou Yifan

USA 12/11/15

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 g6 5.Nc3 Bg7 6.Be3 Nf6 7.Bc4 O-O 8.Bb3 Re8

Negi devotes a whole chapter to this rare move. “This rook move is incredibly subtle, which is why it has almost exclusively been played by really strong players.” You’ll need to read Negi’s explanation of the points of 8…Re8 to understand why he is so impressed by this move.

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We are continuing our special offer – if you buy three books or more and live inside the European Union (as defined by UPS) we will send you an extra book free. Recently the default option on the free book has been Grandmaster Battle Manual but we will change that now to POSITIONAL CHESS SACRIFICES by GM Mihai Suba.

But if you already have Positional Chess Sacrifices or would prefer a different free book, then send us an email with your order, asking to have it replaced with one of the following titles:

GRANDMASTER VERSUS AMATEUR
GRANDMASTER BATTLE MANUAL
REGGIO EMILIA 2007/2008
TACTIMANIA
TRUE LIES IN CHESS
CHAMPIONS OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM
SAN LUIS 2005
ATTACKING THE SPANISH
CUTTING EDGE 1: THE OPEN SICILIAN
CUTTING EDGE 2: SICILIAN NAJDORF 6.Be3

I do not want to come with a big comprehensive update at this point, but just a look at where we are with the immediate projects.

Grandmaster Repertoire 1.e4 – vs. The Sicilian II by Parimarjan Negi

This will be out on 18th November.

Grandmaster Repertoire 6A – Beating the Anti-Sicilians by Vassilios Kotronias

The book is done, edited and typeset. We are in the phase called “proofreading”, which is where we reduce the number of mistakes we have made. Then it goes to printing and conversion into Forward Chess. The book will be out in the middle of December, a week earlier on FC than on paper, as usual.

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Do you know what you will be doing for the next six months? We do. The real question will be if we can do everything as fast as we want. For example: Boris Gelfand constantly gets all these annoying tournament invitations that distracts him from the book…

We do not really have dates for anything else than the Dragon books, published next, but I can give a few informal updates.

The next volume on 1.e4 vs the Sicilian is only a few weeks from going to the printer. It could theoretically be out late October. The Razuvaev book is far progressed as well. But most importantly, John has made great progress on the Playing 1.e4 books. I think the first one will be out in November and the second not long after. We considered publishing them together, but it did not really make a lot of sense to wait with one, while the other one is finalised. So, they will be out a few months apart.