Quality Chess Blog

Earlier today we got a phonecall from Ray Edwards, head of the three-man committee deciding the Book of the Year by the English Chess Federation. We were pleased to be nominated, this year with two books. The short list of candidates looks like this:

1) Yasser Seirawan: Chess Duels

2) John Nunn: Understanding Chess Endgames

3) Kopec, Ftacnik & Browne: Champions of the New Millennium

4) Jacob Aagaard: Attacking Manual 1+2

It is very pleasing to have both the books we sent in (each publisher can only send two books) nominated. Whatever the final choice, this is a big moment for Quality Chess – and the authors as well, of course.

See the committee’s reasonings.

The company which runs the servers for our website and e-mails tells us we have had intermittent server outages during the past week. It is possible e-mails we have sent have not been received. Or maybe e-mails you sent to us have not reached us. It’s all a mystery. Apologies if there are any resulting mix-ups. This is beyond our control, but we shall sort it out as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, Andrew is back from the British Championship. No GM norm and he was rather off-form early on, but a storming finish got Andrew into the prizes at 3rd=.

Jacob returns today from the Politiken Cup in Copenhagen. In the Danish league Jacob is a team-mate of our author GM Lars Schandorff. Jacob and Lars had agreed that the team’s board order would be decided by their Tournament Performance Rating in the Politiken Cup. Lars 2478, Jacob 2479.  A clear victory.

I am away from the office playing in the Politiken Cup (4/5 so far). But here is a current estimate of when the various books will be available, and the order I expect them to come out.