Quality Chess Blog

We have, starting with The Cutting Edge 1, begun publishing limited edition hard cover copies. The are available in the Limited Edition section.

On Friday 9th, we will publish THE CUTTING EDGE 1 and THE ALTERMAN GAMBIT GUIDE. It will soon be available in chess shops all over Europe, and hopefully somewhere in the US as well.

Further down the line, our publishing schedule looks like this:

The first copies of GM2 have started to arrive various places. By luck, Niggemann seemed to get the books earlier than usual. People are telling us it is great – but we have not yet seen it!

We have moved a few things around in the publishing schedule, but with a new employee starting in two weeks, we hope that we will be able to keep those arbitrary deadlines now.

Hi guys, just an updated publishing schedule…

Our warehouse has informed us that our books will not arrive today as scheduled. A bit of detective work shows that between the – 32.6 (“I am no eskimo” – our printer) and the -22 in Poland, apparently DHL has suffered a problem. It looks a bit like this:

Hopefully the books will arrive tomorrow…

Marin said the following about the 1.c4 c5 repertoire, which a lot of you have asked about:

Here is a draft plan for the 1…c5 part: White plays 2.g3 (as in all the lines of the whole repertoire, with the exception of 1…b6), thus avoiding the hedgehog. Against the reversed Maroczy I will analyze a system based on a2-a3 (You will find a couple of games of mine in the database). In the closed line, I recommend d2-d4 against e7-e6 (planning Nge7). In the lines classified under A39, starting with Qd4-d3, I will examine other lines than Khalifman (for instance, I prefer Be3 over Bd2).

As said earlier, I will stop giving exact estimated dates, as they are confusing people. An estimate is not a commitment, but how things will work out if everything runs smoothly. Alas, it rarely does, so I am coming with these rather vague dates instead. I hope they will concur better with people’s expectations.

Three books are confirmed for next Wednesday (Note to self – put Boost your chess 1 on the webshop). GM2 is written and a lot has been edited. However, the book is so big, so we are not 100% certain about the 17th February publication date.

Anyway, here is the list:

We are working very hard. We have finished Attacking Manual 2 and only need to perform a final proofread before it goes to the printer. No problems with the 13th January publication date, last time I checked with them. We will also be sending two classics, My System and Questions of Modern Chess Theory for reprint in the near future. The same goes for Build up your Chess 2, which had run out. In that connection I should say that Boost your Chess 1 has been typeset and that only proofreading and correcting commas remains. It is on schedule for the 27th January publication, but would be pushed back 1-2 weeks, should we not be able to finish GM2 in time.

Because it is of course Boris Avrukh’s follow-up to his first 1.d4 repertoire, Grandmaster Repertoire 2 – 1.d4 volume 2, where he will consider all other replies than 1…d5, which everyone is always asking about. It has been more than one year in the making, but the author is in good shape still, and has sent the final update (last week). As Boris is not a fluent English speaker, time is pressing on GM John Shaw to make it all sound beautiful. The 27th January is still possible, but it might be sharp. It requires that we hand in the book the 8th of January to the printer, a time where some of us are still hung over… Read more…

On the 9th of December we will publish GENIUS IN THE BACKGROUND and REGGIO EMILIA 2007/2008, if everything goes right. We are working away on the other books to the best of our ability. Andrew has edited AM2 and typeset 5 out of the six chapters. I am about to begin typesetting AM1 (2nd edition). Hopefully I can do it much better than the first time around.

GM Repertoire 2 is getting closer to existence. Boris says he needs two weeks to hand in the remaining chapters. A lot of the previous chapters have been seriously formatted and need a quick edit before typesetting.

Once this is done, John will focus on finishing the puzzle book. The material has been collected. We have 2000+ positions, gathered over the last five years, now we need to select.

Boost your Chess 1 is close to going to the printer.

The rest should be coming on well, as always, the question is how fast the three of us can get the work done.

We have been battling a bit with ill health, tax returns (and an inept, now fired, accountant), commas and the usual Scottish autumn weather. As a result everything has slided a bit.

Reggio Emilia 2007/2008 is printed, and can be ordered from our webshop, but we are not releasing it for wider distribution until Genius In the Background is ready. The concern is that of the smaller bookshops, who prefers to keep quantities higher, and thus postage costs low. For this reason we prefer to publish books two at a time.
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