Sending a book of to the printer happens on a Friday night one time in three. Outside it is getting dark and dangerous, while we proofread the 440 pages a final time – undoubtedly missing something important. At the end of all books, we hate them. Or rather, we just want to go home…
It seems the book will be out on the 12th April in some countries, and a few days later in others. We will start sending websales on the 11th.
In these times where Saif Gaddafi claims to have paid for half of Sarkozy’s election campaign, where the Danish Minister of Defence says she had not considered that, when asked what would happen if Lybia would retaliate against Danish ships in the Mediterranean once in war, also Quality Chess has suffered hostility against our brand. This afternoon, we found the following evil note on our door:
We are outraged! We assure our readers that this is absolutely untrue! Our draughts are at least decent…
John says I have to go back to Experts on the Anti-Sicilian now :-(. Seems it should be available to ship to shops on the 8th together with Chess Lessons…
All four editors at Quality Chess were playing this weekend.
Andrew Greet scored 2/2 in the 4NCL and John Shaw likewise in the Danish League. Jacob scored 1.5/2 and Colin mumbled his result and did not answer when asked a second time.
The 4NCL can be found at www.4NCL and the Danish League at http://www.divisionsskak.dk/holdarkiv/div1011/vis_rakke_tabel.asp?find=LIGA
Jacob’s win over IM Karsten Rasmussen bears good news for followers of the Tarrasch Defence:
1. Nf3 d5 2. d4 c5 3. c4 e6 4. e3 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. cxd5 exd5 7. Be2 Nc6 8. O-O
Bd6 9. dxc5 Bxc5 10. b3 O-O 11. Bb2 Re8 12. Rc1 Ba7 13. Qd3 Bg4 14. Rfd1 Qe7
15. Na4? Ne4
Also winning was: 15… Nb4 16. Qb1 Bxe3!
16. a3 Nxf2 17.Kxf2 Bxe3+ 18. Kf1 Bxf3 19. Bxf3 Qh4 20. Rc2 Qxh2 21. Ke2 Bd4+
0-1
Quality Chess has joined the arms race and purchased a super computer, kindly assembled by Phil Harris. Our new machine is running at many times the speed of our quad core standard machines and needs a water cooling system to not overheat. Hopefully this will increase the level of our analysis for the future.
I wanted to show you a photo of how the water cooling looks inside, but it was quite low quality and I can’t be bothered to open it again. Sorry.
Update: Photo of the innards of the fancy new computer:
last night at the gym I caused a bit of a stir. I returned to my locker and found that once I unlocked it, there was nothing inside. I call the manager and he started checking all the locks to see if anyone by chance had the same code. 10 minutes later we were back where we started. I asked, what do you usually do in this situation? Check everything before we believe the worst, he replied. As for example checking the empty… Oops, is that your stuff? So, I had locked the empty locker next to my stuff. And it was all there, passport, money, blackberry, cards, secret novelties in the Sicilian, dirty books where the king is stripped bare. Surely you were mortified, a friend asked later. No, not at all. I burst out laughing. We always say, one day we will laugh at this. I always try to make sure that this one day is today…
A few months ago a guy wrote to me asking if we were going to include 6.Bg5 Nbd7 7.f4 Qc7 8.Qf3 h6 9.Bh4 g5!? in GM6. We had no intention to do so, but a last moment change of hearts has meant that we do indeed include this topical line. Berg, Dominguez, Navara and Ivanchuk has all been happy to try it out (not all have been allowed), but it is mainly Bogner that has shown the way in practice. However, if the ‘inventor’ of this line sees this post, he is very welcome to e-mail me again, as I can’t find his last e-mail!
Dear Quality Chess Reader,
Recently we have experimented by printing some of our books in hardback. It was a success both in the favourable feedback we received on our blog and in terms of the sales. In fact, the hardbacks disappeared so quickly that we at Quality Chess did not even get to keep a personal copy. For this and other reasons we are reprinting more hardback versions of Soviet Chess Strategy and GM Repertoire 7: The Caro-Kann. We hope they will be available in 3-4 weeks.
GM Boris Alterman was on John Watson’s ICC Radio show Chess Talk. Boris talked about about his book The Alterman Gambit Guide – White Gambits which John Watson spoke about very favourably. A few quotes (from Jacob’s memory): "A great section on the Panov… Designed with the average player in mind. Can also be used by club players and other more experienced players… A very well produced book, typical of Quality Chess."
The Quality Chess Puzzle Book and GM Repertoire 6 – The Sicilian Defence will both be out in early July. Some of our readers generously contributed to the puzzle book by sending in their best chess moments, which we used to create a chapter called Contributions from our Readers
Regards, Quality Chess
www.qualitychess.co.uk
www.qualitychess.co.uk/blog
Publication Schedule (with predicted page numbers)
Lubomir Ftacnik Grandmaster Repertoire 6 – The Sicilian Defence July 356
John Shaw Quality Chess Puzzle Book July 256
Christian Bauer Play the Scandinavian July/August 320
Artur Yusupov Boost your Chess 2 July/August 288
Mihail Marin Grandmaster Repertoire 4 – The English Opening vol. 2 August 480
Mihail Marin Grandmaster Repertoire 5 – The English Opening vol. 3 August 320
Tibor Karolyi Karpov’s Strategic Wins: Volume 1 – 1961-1985 September 360
Tibor Karolyi Karpov’s Strategic Wins: Volume 2 – 1986-2009 September 360
John Shaw The King’s Gambit September/October 256
Having mulled this over for some time, we have decided to yield to the demand for hardcover editions of some of our titles. I had originally said that it would increase the price by 20-30 euro, and it would if we were planning to sell the books through the usual outlets. However, we will only be selling them on this site, and they will be in a limited quantity.
We have thus ordered 32 copies of The Cutting Edge 1, of which 5 copies have already been spoken for. So, 27 remain. The selling price will be 29.99 euro, which basically covers the extra cost of having this limited edition, and hopefully does not leave us with too big a hole in our pockets!
Later on in the spring we will have limited editions of GM4-7. After this we will think. In connection with this I have to violate something I said on the blog earlier – that we will not offer these before an excerpt is up. We will. However, I will not be limiting the number of the edition until three weeks before publication, so those waiting for an excerpt will have a fair shot.
The Limited edition category on the website will go live on the 5th of April.
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