Quality Chess Blog

Unfortunately it seems that Boris Avrukh is falling a bit behind his own and our expectations to what he would be able to do with Grandmaster Repertoire 2 here in the autumn. The book is close to being done, but there are many lines such as 1.d4 g6, 1.d4 e6 2.c4 f5 3.g3 Bb4+ that needs to be covered as well, and the grandmaster does not seem to be able to do everything before he is faced with tournament commitments. So, the book is pushed a bit down the list, with the updated publishing schedule looking like this:

As always, this is a prediction, not a promise!

Final Scores:

GM C. McNab 8
IM N. Mikkelsen 7
FM N. Berry 5½
FM D. Eggleston 5
IM A. Greet 5
M. Mitchell 4
A. Tate 4
FM M. Andersen 2½
FM C. Thomson 2½
J. Grant 1½

A brilliant 2650 performance by GM Colin McNab, who is the main proof-reader of Quality Chess. Our books have benefited greatly from Colin’s sharpness. He is the ideal man for the job – a strong player, published author, and, as a bonus, a world class chess puzzle solver. Next month Colin will be part of the British team in the World Solving Championships in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

No IM norms were made, but FM Neil Berry was closest, in third place, nudging his rating closer to the 2400 level that is also a requirement for the IM title.

Games from the final two rounds are posted in the comments and all the Games are on-line.

OCTOBER
14th    Marin/Garrett    Reggio Emilia 2007/2008
28th    Tibor Karolyi    Genius in the Background
28th    Boris Avrukh    Grandmaster Repertoire 2 – 1.d4 Volume Two
NOVEMBER
15th    Jacob Aagaard    Attacking Manual Volume 2
15th    Jacob Aagaard    Attacking Manual Volume 1 2nd edition
29th    John Shaw   Quality Chess Puzzle Book
29th    Boris Alterman    The Alterman Gambit Guide – White Gambits
29th    Artur Yusupov    Boost your Chess 1
2010
John Shaw    The King’s Gambit
Lubomir Ftacnik   Grandmaster Repertoire 5 – The Sicilian Defence

The English Chess Federation recently announced their short list for their Book of the Year prize and we are delighted that John Cox’s The Berlin Wall is nominated. The short list is on the ECF site

Opening books rarely feature in Book of the Year prizes, so it is good to see The Berlin Wall receiving well deserved attention (in my biased opinion). As a book, it is much more than a list of variations – I would claim there is real chess understanding. Anyway, doing book reviews of our own books may be a new blog low, so I’ll stop here.

Quality Chess is sponsoring an international all-play-all tournament, which is underway now. The event is being hosted by Edinburgh Chess Club.

Update:
Scores after 8 Rounds

C.McNab 7½
N,Mikkelsen 6
A.Greet 5
N.Berry 5
M.Mitchell 4
D.Eggleston 4
A.Tate 3½
M.Andersen 2
C.Thomson 1½
J.Grant 1½

I will post some of the games as they become available. I will put up a link to the games and place them in the comments section. It is not a high-tech event, so no live internet coverage. Thanks to Geoff Chandler of Chandler Cornered for sending me some of the games from the first couple of rounds (posted below) with a few of his comments. Geoff’s site has stories and photos from the event.

Games

10 player all-play-all, 12-20 September 2009, play is from 1pm – 7pm each day.
Edinburgh Chess Club, 1 Alva Street, Edinburgh, Scotland.
http://www.edinburghchessclub.co.uk/
Prize money:

1st £500
2nd £300
3rd £150

Participants:

GM Colin McNab 2466 Scotland

IM Andrew Greet 2433 England

IM Nikolaj Mikkelsen 2361 Denmark

FM Mads Andersen 2338 Denmark

FM David Eggleston 2368 England

FM Craig Thomson 2324 Scotland

FM Neil Berry 2301 Scotland

Jonathan Grant 2249 Scotland

Alan Tate 2175 Scotland

Martin Mitchell 2175 Scotland

Finally! Yesterday we got a copy of Marin’s new book, Grandmaster Repertoire 3 – The English Opening Volume One, here at the office. There was a general skirmish before John managed to take the copy aside as his own.

I am of course deeply biased, but I think Mihail has done it again and produced his best book. I actually think that every book he has written has been better than the one before, with there of course being a debate whether or not Learn from the Legends is better than Secrets of Attacking Chess, both of them personal favourites of mine.

The book includes many hundreds of novelties, lucid explanations, and a deep passion for the English. If I was not going to write the 1.e4 tomes myself in the coming year, I would be inspired to try out this fascinating repertoire, where pawn, piece and queen sacrifices are suggested as challenges to existing theory.

Finally I have written the last chapter of Attacking Manual 2, plus annotated three extra games for Attacking Manual 1. The main reason for doing a second edition of AM1 is that some people disliked the layout. I am one of those people. Also, I am sad to admit that there were a number of typos that should not have been there.

However, now the books are done! The first edit/proofread has been done and a second one is coming up soon. We want to polish these books and make sure we get no complaints about our effort this second time around.

I am honestly completely unsure about the quality of AM2. When I was done with AM1 I was absolutely sure that this was my best book (out of way too many) and that it would be a hit. However, no one really took notice and sales were generally disappointing.

The book also got absolutely slated by Jeremy Silman, who wrote several things where he knew better. Most importantly he complained that I had not contacted Watson to discuss the topics in AM1, which ever so slightly relates to Watson’s work, something I recognised in the introduction. I had actually asked Watson, through Silman, if he wanted to veto anything I wrote in the book, as the last thing I wanted to do was to offend him. I was told that he did not want this power and that I should thus just write what I wanted.

In Silman’s review there is also a reference to a grandmaster’s limited understanding of a position. I am sure he means the game by Tiger-Hillarp Persson against Grooten, where he misses 22.Bc4!, which would just win. Actually I had a chance to talk to Tiger about this game not long after the book was out (I gave him a copy). Rather than being insulted about this passage, he was thinking a lot about it, not understanding why this “obvious” move did not occur to him during the game, and if there really were anything he needed to correct in his chess understanding.

Grandmasters do not know or understand everything and are not only assaulted by oversights and time trouble, as Silman said in his review. But it is easy to forgive Silman this mistake, as he has no first hand experience on this topic.

I have refused the temptation to include any of this rant in the books, as no one would care. However, now it is at least to be found on this obscure blog.

The two books are projected to be out in October.

In his excellent Checkpoint column at Chesscafe, FM Carsten Hansen gives Sabino Brunello’s Attacking the Spanish a 5/5 review.

However, Quality Chess does get some criticism for being too pushy with our author:

“The back cover tell us that the author “is one of the leaders of the youthful revival in Italian chess” and that he “is still a teenager, but his rating is already 2550 and increasing daily. By the time this book is printed he will probably be a grandmaster.” This is an odd embellishment to say the least. A quick check on FIDE’s website shows that he has yet to become a grandmaster (at least the title hasn’t been awarded yet) and his rating is down. However, the poorly worded promotion was completely unnecessary, because he is already a stronger player than most authors today.”

You can fairly accuse us of pushing our book and our author. We are terribly proud of both, especially as Sabino is also my student. However, when we send a book to the printer in June, please do not have a go at us for not predicting that the author might lose rating points in August! (And sadly September too.) Sabino has two norms and is a very strong player. He will be a GM the moment he makes the third norm. This can happen at any moment, for example at the World Juniors in Argentina in October.