Quality Chess Blog

This is what our current thinking is concerning out publishing schedule. It is a bit mundane; no big surprises. But there are some good books in there!

Elsewhere on the internet there has been some debate on what constitutes a novelty and what does not. Some people think that it is a move not played before; others think it is a new idea. Then there is the whole computer aspect of it. If a computer plays or mentions it; is it a novelty?

In Quality Chess we are trying to make useful books to those wanting to prepare for their games in the most effective manner possible. Most people will use a combination of books and databases, while some will only use databases. For this reason we have always gone by the “not in the database” definition.

We encourage our authors to indicate when a move is new. We always tell them to give sources where appropriate and to credit all ideas by other people to them. Therefore you will frequently find in our books a N and a comment saying that another person has analysed this in xxx publication.

We also tell our authors to write the truth. You will not find many examples of over-optimistic evaluation in QC books. Not only is it rather low to write in this way; making it unpleasant to go to work. We also think it is a poor business strategy.

Regarding novelties; I did not put up an article first, as I did not want to prejudice the view from people frequenting this blog. It could have been split in other ways, but this is what we could think off in the office and what others suggested. The result indicates a difference of opinion, but does not suggest that we are out of touch, so we will continue to do what makes sense to us and what keeps our books consistent.

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White to play – what is the best option?

I saw a game a few days ago that made me think about something that often happens to us: While we are calculating our main line, going deep, looking for nuances, we can get a sudden epiphany! But what about: “this!”

While this sometimes is a stroke of genius, there is no guarantee that this is the case. But the emotional impact can be rather big, skewing our judgement.

The example in question is the following:

Read more…

Are we in for a boring week on the blog? I could use one after the debates on whether to say that if I did what you did, I would not be able to look my friends in the eye indicates judgement – which for some reason I do not understand, it does not.

Anyway, I had a thought experiment. If you are not allowed to win by chance in a “Mate in 105” position, but have to offer a draw after you have blundered your queen and the opponent has blundered his back in return; what then if we skewed the odds further in my opponent’s favour? We actually make the position a technical draw. We take the moment before the trick and then try to claim a draw, because it would be wrong to win that way.

Furthermore, in order to make people feel ok about voting yes to upholding the arbiter’s decision, we all voted for it. I even did it twice. If the remaining 7 votes were taking the piss or serious, I do not know. But here is the result:

So, what is the situation? We have the right to play on and not to play for tricks and should even consider suing if denied. Because if we actually make a trick, then we should leave by the back door and never come back. Am I summing it up fairly? For some people, yes. Others probably think like I do: we have a set of rules and as long as we stick to them, we are doing just fine. Chess is an artform, a sport and a science. But not all three all the time.