Quality Chess Blog

Karjakin – Svidler 1/2-1/2
Mamedyarov – Topalov 1/2-1/2
Andreikin – Kramnik 1/2-1/2
Anand – Aronian 1–0

I was thinking I would give my impression from the candidates from time to time, to spark a discussion. I probably will not participate a lot in it.

We have Kramnik and Aronian as BIG favourites, but as we saw in round 1, things are maybe not that easy!
Read more…

I promised to put this up and thought it would be more fun here than at position 37 on the discussion.

The candidates system is the best possible system at the moment as it does what it is determined to do: get the right winner. We saw that in London, Mexico City and San Luis. A lengthy match-cycle as the distant past might look better to some, but it takes too long and gives us less World Championship matches as well as no promotion.

The players in the candidates are found in a fair way:

* The World Cup gives everyone a chance to qualify. Which this time meant Andreikin made it through. I cannot see that this will lead to Aronian or Kramnik not having a fair shot at the top spot, but it makes the system democratic, as in the past. Remember that Short beat Gurevich with Black in the exchange French 1990 in order to qualify to play Kasparov 1993!

* The Grand Prix gives 20+ of the best players a chance to qualify based on 44 games each (4×11 – please correct me if incorrect number). No one are more deserving than those qualifying there.

* Rating guarantees that the two best players (other than World Ch.) in the World participates, even though one of them failed in his attempt to qualify (Aronian).

* The loser of the World Championship match cannot qualify by other means as he is busy preparing for the match.

* The show needs funding; thus a free space is a good idea. In 2013 it was the World’s no. 4. In 2014 it is a 7 times Russian Champion and no. 3 in 2013 candidates.

Somehow, the idea that it is an unfair system when some top 10 players are not playing is the same as saying that the whole qualification should be based on rating. I do not believe that Nakamura’s ability to beat lower rated players more often than some other top players is relevant to who is the World Champion.

And the criticism of Karjakin, at the time of qualification no. 5 in the world is qualified on rating is weird too. If there was no World Cup, he would have qualified directly on rating anyway. Things have moved, but everyone knew when the date was to qualify on rating.

Despite my immense respect for Nakamura, I think he just got it wrong on this one. The biggest threat to Carlsen is someone who qualifies under a fair and open system, not the one picked by journalists. In the same interview Nakamura also tried to portray his defeat of Kramnik in London as a great achievement, rather than to admit that he was outplayed and then got lucky. I guess it characterises an optimist and is a great assett for the US no. 1, but winning lost endings in rapid does not make you a challenger for the crown…

If you are like me, you often get “we don’t like to brag…” emails from our friends at New in Chess, where of course they revel in their recent achievements. I have nothing against this, only I am not sure how well it works with a sophisticated audience like the people who buy chess books. This is the main reason we are not doing something similar with out blog or newsletter.

Obviously we like the fact that people occasionally buy our books when they visit the blog, but we are actually more focused on the positive debates and ideas we get from it. Do not forget that the Grandmaster Preparation series (including the name!) is based on a suggestion here.

It is the same way with the books we produce. We try to focus on the product and then let sales work out for themselves. This is not because we do not like bestsellers; we like them a lot. They keep the lights on and allow us to take a salary (which in John’s and my case has only been for the last three of the soon ten years we have been going that this has been happening).

We did at some point try to make “commercial” books. Easy, quick and profitable. I think 2-3 books were aimed at this. We are talking 2005-8 maybe. No one really bought these books and we hated the process and the product. So we decided not to think like this anymore.

At times there are books where we think will only do limited sales, but they become runaway successes. I remember joking that PUMP UP YOUR RATING was the new version of Excelling at Chess. But I did not believe many would buy it (John did the final edit and was far more optimistic, based on quality). Actually it has already sold 500 copies more than we expected from 10 years sale. Still, when Axel came to me and said he had wanted to write this book for years, had worked towards it and only wanted to do it with us; I became both flattered and interested. So I personally worked over some chapters with him, to help him communicate his ideas better. Once he got the hang of it, he did not need my help anymore and wrote the rest of the book with great confidence and skill. He very deservedly won the ChessCafe 2013 Book of the Year award.

One day I will maybe give the general writing advice; if John will let me!

Oh yes; the title is all me. I know it is corny, but we were trying to get people to read this gem of a book.

Another big surprise was the success of Grandmaster Preparation – Calculation. This was based on an idea Dvoretsky told me about back in 2002; to sort the exercises by thinking method and not chess theme. It was just a way for me to use training material I had around and was supposed to be a slow, low burner. Rather surprisingly it looks like it will become my biggest seller for Quality Chess and won the ACP book of the Year award. We did not think this was the best book of the year, but who are we to argue with the public.

The book we loved most (of our own) is Judit Polgar’s How I Beat Fischer’s Record. Luckily the critiques have their high-brow award as well, where quality beat popularity. Judit won the ECF book of the Year award 2013, after missing out on the ACP award by only ONE vote. The book has not been as fully successful as we hoped, but then we were very optimistic.

Finally, we regained the lock on the ChessPublishing Opening Book of the Year vote with The King’s Gambit. This has very little promotional value; it translates to just about no sales. And this year it was an unpleasant experience altogether.

Still, it is nice to see that John’s five years of agonizing, procrastination and finally immense work effort is rewarded with not only good sales, but also praise from the opening theory fanatics. We are very grateful for the support and very proud winners. The book will be reprinted soon and the cover will show how proud we are.

Previous winners have been Marin (2009), Avrukh (2010, 2011), Sherbakov (Everyman, 2012).

So, we do not like to brag, but… Quality Chess has for the first time won the Grand Slam. The four awards all chess authors can compete for. The only one that got away from us this time around was FIDE’s Boleslavsky award (where only FIDE trainers are eligible): quite fittingly it went to Jeroen Bosch as a sort of lifetime award for the SOS series and various other writings. Congratulation to him, it is very well deserved!

It will be interesting to see how Pump will do in the other awards this year…

This is what our current thinking is concerning out publishing schedule. It is a bit mundane; no big surprises. But there are some good books in there!

Are we in for a boring week on the blog? I could use one after the debates on whether to say that if I did what you did, I would not be able to look my friends in the eye indicates judgement – which for some reason I do not understand, it does not.

Anyway, I had a thought experiment. If you are not allowed to win by chance in a “Mate in 105” position, but have to offer a draw after you have blundered your queen and the opponent has blundered his back in return; what then if we skewed the odds further in my opponent’s favour? We actually make the position a technical draw. We take the moment before the trick and then try to claim a draw, because it would be wrong to win that way.

Furthermore, in order to make people feel ok about voting yes to upholding the arbiter’s decision, we all voted for it. I even did it twice. If the remaining 7 votes were taking the piss or serious, I do not know. But here is the result:

So, what is the situation? We have the right to play on and not to play for tricks and should even consider suing if denied. Because if we actually make a trick, then we should leave by the back door and never come back. Am I summing it up fairly? For some people, yes. Others probably think like I do: we have a set of rules and as long as we stick to them, we are doing just fine. Chess is an artform, a sport and a science. But not all three all the time.

I just got these two as options from one of our cover artists. I would like to know what the public thinks. Please vote in the poll and come with further comments below.

Cover A is the brown one, Cover B is the red one.

Our competitors are so desperate that they have hired spies to work out what we are looking at, at the moment.

Luckily John was on his lunch break, reading Krugman’s column. So nothing was revealed.

On an unrelated note, there is a mistake in the Slav book. In one diagram White has pawns on a2, b2 and b3. With 2.c4 on the board, this was some achievement! Blame me…