Quality Chess Blog

It has been a while since we mentioned it, but we are continuing our free-fourth-book 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.

The previous default option on the free book was Chess Behind Bars. For August and September we will switch the default option to GRANDMASTER BATTLE MANUAL. But if you already have that book, or would prefer a different free book, then send us an email to salesgroup@qualitychess.co.uk with your order, asking to have it replaced with one of the following titles:

ATTACKING THE SPANISH
CARLSEN’S ASSAULT ON THE THRONE
CHAMPIONS OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM
CHESS BEHIND BARS
CUTTING EDGE 1: THE OPEN SICILIAN
CUTTING EDGE 2: SICILIAN NAJDORF 6.Be3
GRANDMASTER VERSUS AMATEUR
LUTHER’S CHESS REFORMATION
REGGIO EMILIA 2007/2008
THE ALTERMAN GAMBIT GUIDE – WHITE GAMBITS
THE ALTERMAN GAMBIT GUIDE – BLACK GAMBITS VOLUME 1
THE ALTERMAN GAMBIT GUIDE – BLACK GAMBITS VOLUME 2
THE SECRET LIFE OF BAD BISHOPS
SAN LUIS 2005

Quality Chess nominated three titles for the FIDE Book of the Year prize. And we are delighted that all three were selected for the shortlist – more than any other publisher. The FIDE announcement can be read here.

Best of luck to all our contenders!

The three titles we nominated are: Decision Making in Major Piece Endings by Boris Gelfand and Jacob Aagaard.

Think Like a Machine by Noam Manella and Zeev Zohar.

And the third nomination was an Italian Renaissance double-act: Move Orders, Tricks and Alternatives and The Main Lines by Martyn Kravtsiv.

We are happy to confirm that we are printing two new books by two English stars.

Winning by GM Nigel Short is a book where the title gives a good idea of the content. Short gives the inside story to eight of his tournament wins. Excellent annotations, fun stories, fine photos – there is a lot to this book, which is the first Nigel Short has ever written! You can read an excerpt here.

Coffeehouse Repertoire – 1.e4 Volume 1 by GM Gawain Jones is a repertoire book that, in my view, strikes the perfect balance by giving strong, promising lines for White, without overwhelming the reader with a mass of variations. Together with Volume 2 (which will follow in a month or two) this will form a complete repertoire with 1.e4. We are being a little cheeky calling it “coffeehouse” – it is much better than that. You can read an excerpt here.

Gawain visited www.killerchesstraining.com last week to talk about his forthcoming book, Coffee House Repertoire 1.e4 – Volume 1, which we expect will be out at the very end of June.

You can watch the entire episode here:

One of my favourite things in this job is to take books from our bookcases in the office, pack them up and send them off to another bookcase all over of the world. It is just so nice for me to have this reminder that there is still a huge world out there, daydreaming about traveling with the books to Brazil, Australia, Kenya, Hong Kong, Vladivostok, Dubai, Indonesia or some lovely Mediterranean village. I look forward to the day that an order for Antarctica will pop up. Or a photo of Quality Chess books in Antarctica. That would be so cool, on so many levels!

Anyway, after I am done daydreaming about travelling again, the books are packed up nice and tight, all the labels are in place, Claire and I look out to find the best way to ship them. It’s not the lowest offer we are going for, but the one that makes more sense to us. For example, delivering two books in 3 days to the USA for £30/€34/$50 is better for the buyer than have it delivered for €23 in 10 days. So we choose the option we would like to receive as customers. €34 and 2 working days delivery. And that is how we operate here at Quality Chess.

In the last 18 months though shipping cost and shipping times have skyrocketed. All those of you that you are shipping goods worldwide, understand what I am talking about. We had to increase the shipping fee after 10 years of keeping the same price and it worked. The costs are now covered and that is what our goal is; to offer the books to everyone who cannot get the books from a chess shop, while being able to cover the expenses.

But the prices for Oceania keep going up. It used to be £19.20 to send a book to Oceania with Royal Mail and it would take at least 4 weeks. It was manageable. But a little after we increased the shipping cost to €10 per book and we promised to keep it there for a year, Royal Mail increased their prices and nowadays it is £26 and it takes 8 weeks minimum. It is just unacceptable, so we went for courier services. With the average price cover for a book being €25 plus €10 shipping, and just the shipping cost for Oceania for a single book being €45, without taking into consideration any other cost, we have two options. Either stop shipping there, which would violate the principle of offering the books to everyone worldwide, or come up with a solution that will be better for everyone. You know us, we went for option number two.

Effective immediately, orders for Oceania will have a €45 flat shipping rate with UPS and the delivery will be fast! We understand people that only want to buy one book will be disappointed and we are very sorry, but there is nothing else we can do. Talk to a friend and order books together; it’s cheaper for you and better for the environment.

Hi guys,

So, we have managed to cut through the red tape. The books are going out and we have used the time to make some improvements to our distribution system, especially to the US. Hopefully more will come soon!

We luckily were already registered for VAT in Poland, so this was not a problem. But we needed an EORI number. We quickly registered for one, but the original paper, from which the scan had been taken from, had to go to Poland. It was stuck forever in customs, due to Covid protocols. It arrived Tuesday and by Friday we were approved.

All orders has thus been sent out and are on the way!

Dear Quality Chess Customer,

The arrival of 2021 has brought about some reluctant optimism to our fellow consciousness, but also its own set of challenges.

We are based in Glasgow, UK, which has brought two particular challenges. First off, we are seemingly the global epicentre of the pandemic at the moment. We have more deaths per capita than the US or any other major country. As a result, our country has entered into a longer strict lockdown. We are still working, but everything is a bit tricky.

Secondly, the United Kingdom has finally left the EU. John and I were not in favour of this, but it is what it is. We are currently facing some bureaucratic challenges that the UK government or our business organisations did not properly prepare us for. We are working on solving them and hopefully will soon. It is red tape and today computers make it easy for those who know what to do. We just need to find that person!

The effect of this on some of our customers is the following:

Some web sales are delayed. Our website will be updated by tomorrow, showing exactly what has gone out. A lot will go out tomorrow. They will probably take longer to go out than usual, but hopefully not too much.

Orders from chess specialists. At the moment we have to solve the EORI issue. Once we have done so, we are ready to ship books out again. Hopefully it will take just a few days.

Best wishes,

Jacob Aagaard

Congratulations from everyone at Quality Chess to GM Gawain Jones, the new European Blitz Champion! The event was held on-line for obvious reasons, with Gawain topping a stellar field, including beating GM David Navara in the semi-final and GM Alexei Shirov in the final.

Gawain is of course the author of two superb books on the Dragon. And Gawain will be back as a Quality Chess author in 2021 when we publish his 1.e4 repertoire books – his recommended variations are dangerous but not the biggest-theory main lines, so we are calling it the 1.e4 Coffeehouse Repertoire. No publication date is fixed, but somewhere in the first half of the year.

This seems as good a place as any to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.