Quality Chess Blog

A few weeks ago we finally sent Grandmaster Repertoire 10 – The Tarrasch Defence to the printer. They will finish printing it on Friday and we will have it on the way to everybody about a week thereafter, with the 12th being the day they are posted from Glasgow. You can find the excerpt here.

At the moment we are finishing Chess Evolution 5/2011 – the November issue. Printing will start on Thursday and will take about 10 working days. With close to 50 topical games, 24 puzzles and a nice article by Etienne Bacrot, this will be a terrific issue.

After this we will spread from all five working on the same project to doing a bit each. Colin will continue the work on Mihai Suba’s Positional Chess Sacrifices. Andrew will work on The Alterman Gambit Guide – Black Gambits 2, as well as help Jacob and Lubomir Ftacnik with Grandmaster Repertoire 6 – The Sicilian Defence 2nd edition. But before Jacob will be ready for this, he needs to finish Martin Weteschnik’s book Chess Tactics from Scratch, which is a totally reworked 2nd edition of the modern classic Understanding Chess Tactics, which is now hard to get hold of. But don’t worry, the second edition will be worth the wait. John will help Jacob, and in turn Jacob will help with John’s nemesis, The King’s Gambit, which would have been out a long time ago, had we not been so busy publishing other people’s books.

In the horizon we also have the last two volumes of Artur Yusupov’s monumental series (forever placing him among the great chess instructors of all time, we think), Jacob’s suicide mission with five volumes of Grandmaster Repertoire with 1.e4 for White, Grandmaster Repertoire – Beating the 1.d4 deviations (basically where White does not play c2-c4) by Boris Avrukh, Soviet Middlegame Technique by Romanovsky and at least a few complete surprises…

Here is the updated (but as always COMPLETELY UNRELIABLE) publishing schedule:

Dear Quality Chess Reader,

Since our last newsletter we have published several books:

The Alterman Gambit Guide: Black Gambits 1 explains dynamic chess using gambits as a vehicle. Compared to the previous volume in the series, White Gambits, the level of chess is a little higher and Black Gambits 1 could form the basis of an aggressive repertoire against 1.d4 and 1.c4. Gambit lines against 1.e4 will be covered in the concluding volume of the series, Black Gambits 2.

Advanced Chess Tactics by Lev Psakhis is, as the name suggests, about advanced chess tactics. Perhaps I should say a little more? Psakhis covers his topic by studying attacking chess and adds his own great wit and wisdom.

Grandmaster versus Amateur is written by seven grandmasters – Pavel Eljanov, Peter Heine Nielsen, Boris Avrukh, Mihail Marin, Tiger Hillarp Persson plus Jacob Aagaard and me. We told the authors the title and asked them to write a chapter on whatever that suggested to them. As we had hoped, the results were diverse, instructive and entertaining.

Grandmaster Repertoire 10: The Tarrasch Defence by Jacob Aagaard and Nikolaos Ntirlis will be available in early December. It covers an exciting opening that for too long has had a bad reputation. The Tarrasch deserves a revival and the original analysis in this book will spark that renaissance.

Chess Evolution 1 is the latest volume in GM Yusupov’s award-winning instructional series. This follows on from Build Up Your Chess 1 and Boost Your Chess 1 to complete the set of three books at The Fundamentals level.

This time our games collection covers a wide range. It is available in ChessBase or pdf format. I will not list everything, but the file includes a game each annotated by GMs Jonny Hector and Sabino Brunello. In the latter game Mihail Marin’s English repertoire is tested with great success. Boris Avrukh’s Grünfeld repertoire is also featured in several games where new ideas were tried. The rest I shall leave as a surprise.

Regards,
John Shaw
Chief Editor
Quality Chess

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The long road leading to Grandmaster Repertoire 10 – The Tarrasch Defence seems to be coming to an end. The boys will upload the book tomorrow or maybe even today. Meanwhile I have been testing the lines in the European Team Championship in Greece. So far two draws, against strong opposition. As I have managed to win both of my white games, this has been a great success. Today awaits Armenia and either Akopian or Sargissian. Chances are the Tarrasch – and especially my memory – will be seriously tested.

Update from Scotland: We reckon Jacob has White against Akopian. Live games can be watched here.