Quality Chess Blog

Nope! Here it is.

Another month gone by – another publishing schedule. Well, this time I feel that we are really going to live up to the short term ambitions.

I have included only those books we will publish in the spring; not titles that we will do later on, such as The Semi-Slav, Nimzo-Indian, GM6A and GM6B. Be patient. I want the focus this time to be mainly on the titles we are publishing in the next 3-5 months.

A few details are in order. First of all, the author of the Grandmaster Repertoire 1.e4 series is Indian Grandmaster Parimarjan Negi. He is well-known for becoming a grandmaster at the age of 12 and these days known as a very strong grandmaster (peak rating 2671) and an excellent theoretician. A lot of the material for the first volume is written already, with the usual high quantity of new ideas. I am personally very happy with what I have seen and I am sure our audience will be very happy with this material as well.

In the first volume Negi will cover white replies to the Caro-Kann, French and Philidor. The first two are the main openings of course and naturally we will be asked a lot about what lines he suggests. Basically it is 3.Nc3 and the main stuff against both. This means 7.Qg4 in the Winawer, 4.e5 against 3…Nf6 and the long variations in the 4…Bf5 Caro-Kann.

Of other things I can say that Endgame Play will be the biggest book in the Grandmaster Preparation series so far. It is in the same style; it is not an endgame manual, but about 444 exercises in all aspects of the endgame. I have felt that this was a very difficult book to write, but I still hope that it will be very interesting for the readers. Traditionally people do not really buy opening books, so I have gone in to this with a pure artist approach of writing for myself and the 3-5 readers likely to ever make it cover to cover!

Chess from Scracth is the old Soviet beginner book. Kasparov learned chess from it; Dvoretsky wrote the forword for the Russian version.

A quick updated publishing schedule for Winter/Spring 2014. There are a lot of projects down the road that have not been forgotten. Kotronias has worked a lot on the KID and we hope a Mar Del Plata book will be ready late spring, but who knows. It is a big project. Also, GM6A and GM6B will happen. We have dates and material ready for working on it. We have long term plans for books on the Nimzo and QID, but again, long term has not been a stable experience for us.As always, this is the intentions; reality might be very different. Who knows :-).

We have the pleasure to host a Q&A with Larry Kaufman, famous for his great contributions to the development of first Rybka and recently Komodo. Please be free to ask him any polite question you feel like. The best question will be awarded with a copy of Komodo TCEC, the newest version (Larry will choose).

Komodo recently won the World Championship in front of Stockfish and Houdini, so this is quite a catch for us to get this audience driven interview.

The rules are the same as always: all questions provided before the 11th of December will be read, though I cannot promise that Larry will answer them all. He will answer when he has the time, but before the end of the 15th December.

To kick this off, I will start with a few questions of my own (very eager for the free-bee!):

• What are the main reasons Komodo was able to edge out the competition in the World Championship?
• What are the different properties of Komodo, Stockfish, Houdini, Rybka and Fritz and how would the person who wants to improve their chess use these differences to his advantage?
• Is a person better off using one engine or several engines when analysing?

I hope this is a good start. Please provide your questions and make Larry feel welcome here!

In the 60 minutes segment on Magnus Carlsen a few years ago Friedrich Friedel (the journalist behind www.chessbase.com) called Carlsen a bit lazy. Others have tried to put this label on the new World Champion, but I personally never bought it. And if you checked the recent Norwegian documentary on Carlsen, you will at one point see Henrik Carlsen rubbish the claim, stating that Carlsen has looked as much at chess as anyone else of the same age.

The new World Champion is an excellent example of a number of abilities.

First of all, more than anything, incredible determination. In Chennai Carlsen was wrapped in a bubble with no contact with anyone outside his team. Even when he was relaxing in the bowling hall, his thoughts were on the match. A journalist and photographer tried to get a photo of Carlsen somewhere else than the playing hall. Espen Agdestein, Carlsen’s manager (and brother of Simen) saw the journalists and gave them two and a half minute to take a discreet photo, but the Indian bodyguards got to them before they got even a single snap.

Secondly he has a fantastic psyche. He is not made of Teflon as some people believed before London. We should not forget that people react differently to success and to failure. Roger Federer was always the greatest gentleman in tennis – while he was winning. After he stopped winning his behaviour was more erratic and less pleasant. With Carlsen we saw him react differently to playing the Candidates than to playing in Wijk aan Zee. What is important is not that Carlsen has an emotional experience under pressure, but that he managed to keep his focus in game 13 of the Candidates.

Anand was on the other hand not in control over his reaction to the pressure of playing Carlsen. When he did not take on b2 in game three, because it would probably be a draw anyway, he did not put pressure on his opponent, and he was not able to resist the pressure when it was applied to him.

Carlsen has said that his most difficult future opponents would be Kramnik and Caruana. Personally I believe in Kramnik in the Candidates in the spring. I also believe that we will have an entirely different match next time with a challenger that fears nothing and no one. The winner of the Candidates will have these abilities; because otherwise he will not be able to win it. For this reason I believe in Kramnik more than anyone, but also think that Topalov could come through, though he is not as strong as he was at one point.

Finally, it is a pleasure for me to announce that we have been working on a little side-project called Carlsen’s Assault on the Throne. It goes to the printer in a few days and will, with luck permitting, be presented at the London Chess Classic. It will be available everywhere else on the 18th December together with From GM to Top Ten and Grandmaster Repertoire 15 – The French Defence Volume Two.

The first book is available, so Forward Chess has asked us what books we are hoping to put out over the next few months on FC. This is the list I sent to them. As always – things may take longer than anticipated, but this is the plan!

Most of you have probably already seen that there is a great Norwegian documentary on Carlsen available here.

But for those that have not, I would say it is worth a shot. Talking about shots, here is Hammer at work. Pay especial attention to the background:


That looks like a lot of Quality Chess books to me :-).

We have uploaded the Judit Polgar book From GM to Top Ten, which is at least as good as the ECF book of the year How I Beat Fischer’s Record. Also, we have a delivery date for Playing the French. The date given (and from here on) will be the day it arrives in the shops. (Websales are sent out 2 days earlier in general, but not always). Note also that we will have GM 15 – The French Defence 2 ready just before Christmas.

Maybe there will be an additional title ready in 2013. More on this later!

We have been harassed (rightfully so) for the slow progress on putting books on Forward Chess. But finally I have the update that we have put a book in the store. It is of course Richard Pert’s Playing the Trompowsky. I am sure that there is a lot for us to learn before we make the most of this new format, but when I look at the first books we made, I also cannot imagine that it was really us who put those together. They are good, yes, but we have learned a lot since then!