Quality Chess Blog

At times we have to admit to great limitations when it comes to planning. We believed that Grandmaster Repertoire 8 – The Grunfeld Defence was going to be 550 pages – but as we are getting closer to finishing the book, we have realised that 700 pages is more likely.

We cannot do this; it is too much.

We have thus decided to split the book into two volumes. We will have Grandmaster Repertoire 8: The Grunfeld Defence Volume 1 and Grandmaster Repertoire 9: The Grunfeld Defence Volume 2. We have lowered the price, but overall it will of course be more expensive. We are sorry about this, but nothing else makes sense.

Those who have already ordered the book on our website will of course receive both volumes at no additional charge, or they can contact us demanding a refund. However, we hope these customers will see this as a bonus – two books for the price of one.

One knock-on effect of this change is we have to renumber the book previously known as GM9. It is now Grandmaster Repertoire 10: The Tarrasch Defence.

Quality Chess is pleased to host a fourteen-hour training seminar over four days with probably the most renowned theoretician in the world. GM Boris Avrukh has worked with Gelfand, Kramnik and Caruana and is currently the trainer of the Israeli national team.

The sessions will be divided into two themes: the opening and the middlegame.
Thursday the 5th 19-22: Preparation at Grandmaster level
Friday the 6th 19-22: Developments in Avrukh’s 1.d4 repertoire
Saturday the 7th 14-18: Prophylactic Play
Sunday the 8th 12-16: Aggressive Play

Venue: Quality Chess office, Central Chambers, 93 Hope Street, Suite 45 (Mezzanine floor). Entrance next to Caffe Nero, opposite Glasgow Central Station.

Price: £120 for all four days. 50% discount for juniors and those living outside Scotland who travel here to attend. £60 for a single day attendance. If we have more than 20 full paying customers (or equivalent income) every participant will get a free copy of a Quality Chess book. Every participant will receive a 25% discount on QC books bought during the lectures.

Payment method: To reserve your place, please send a cheque made out to Jacob Aagaard to 20 Balvie Road, Glasgow, G62 7TA, UK. Please also confirm via e-mail to jacob@qualitychess.co.uk.

Born in 1978 in Kazakhstan, Boris started playing chess at the age of 6. His first big win was the Soviet u-12 Championship (beating among others Sergey Movsesian). Later the same year he won the u-12 World Championship. In 1991 he won silver in the u-14 European Championship. In 1995 his family moved to the famous chess city of Beer-Sheva in Israel, where Boris received a lot of support from the director of the Beer-Sheva Chess Club, Ilyau Levant. From 1995-2000 Boris worked with Grandmasters Mark Tseitlin and Alexander Huzman (Gelfand’s coach for many years). The work bore fruit and in 1998 he became a grandmaster.

Boris’s debut as a chess writer was Grandmaster Repertoire 1 – 1.d4 Volume One in 2008 and he was immediately hailed as one of the world’s top chess theorists. The book’s impact on top level and amateur chess has been exceptional and also brought great success to Quality Chess. In 2010 Boris repeated this success with the second part of his repertoire: Grandmaster Repertoire 2 – 1.d4 Volume Two. In June his new book, Grandmaster Repertoire 8 – The Grunfeld Defence will be published. All of these books are published by Quality Chess.
From 1998 to 2009 Boris played for the Israeli national team. His success as an author, and subsequent training and lecturing jobs, meant that he was not selected for the 2010 Olympiad due to the principle that only full-time players should be in the team, although he was clearly strong enough. The national coach decided Boris’s abilities were better used as a second and he now works for the Israeli national team in that capacity.

We are sitting four people in the office far beyond our normal time of departure, fighting to get Karpov’s Strategic Wins 2 – The Prime Years away to the printer this evening. The scheduled publication date of the 29th of April remains realistic. The first volume has already been printed, so there are no issues there.

At the same time we have just agreed a four day seminar in Glasgow from the 5th to the 8th of May with Grandmaster Boris Avrukh. He will lecture on issues from the opening and middlegame – ‘but tell them, no endgames!’.

The price for participating will be 120 pounds for all four days, with a discount of 50% for everyone wanting to come from outside Scotland to follow the lectures. If we have more than 20 full price paying participants, a copy of any of Boris’ four books (including Experts on the Anti-Sicilian, shipping to stores today, where Boris wrote a small chapter) will be given to each participant. Those wanting the Grunfeld book will have to wait until it is released on the 3rd of June (hopefully).

A more detailed announcement will follow.

Sean Marsh, writing at The Week in Chess, selected his best books of last year in Off the Shelf – The Best of 2010. As the screenshot below shows, we can be happy that Jacob’s Attacking Manuals 1 and 2 both made the list. Also the bonus of a new spelling of Jacob’s surname.

The full review of the Attacking Manuals says good things such as “They can rightly be considered as the flagships of the Quality Chess productions.”