Quality Chess Blog

Hi guys, what are you planning to do this spring. Here is my plans…

Hi guys,

This is a brief publishing schedule. Just wanted to answer a few of the recurrent questions you have been coming with recently. Hope it helps.

Last week I put up a post referring to a positive review of Victor Mikhalevski’s Beating Minor Openings from GM Matthew Sadler in New In Chess magazine. In this follow-up post, we can proudly reveal that King’s Indian Warfare, by Ilya Smirin, received even higher praise, with Sadler going so far as to call it his ‘Book of the Year’ for 2016!

As you can imagine, the entire review is something of which we as the publisher, and especially Ilya as the author, can feel proud, and I wish I could quote the whole thing! However, the following snippets of Sadler’s review should be enough to give the general picture:

“… a truly fantastic book.”

“Any player looking to take up the King’s Indian should have this book thrust into his hands before he learns a single line of theory!”

“Smirin’s comments are a perfect balance of analysis and general advice”

The review also included a couple of game fragments taken from the ‘Kamikaze Rooks’ chapter. I smiled when reading Sadler’s preamble to this section, where he asks:

“Which lunatic would come up with these manoeuvres?”

Obviously we are delighted that the book has received such high praise; and we hope readers will find it the perfect companion to Kotronias’s epic King’s Indian repertoire series (the last of which I’m currently editing), with one author providing the creative inspiration and the other the theoretical recommendations.

We are continuing our special offer – if you buy three books or more and live in the normal European Union zone (as defined by UPS – for example, they exclude some islands and remote areas) we will send you an extra book free. The previous default option on the free book was Grandmaster versus Amateur.

For February we will switch the default option to TACTIMANIA by Glenn Flear. But if you already have that book, or would prefer a different free book, then send us an email to salesgroup@qualitychess.co.uk with your order, asking to have it replaced with one of the following titles:

QUALITY CHESS PUZZLE BOOK
CARLSEN’S ASSAULT ON THE THRONE
POSITIONAL CHESS SACRIFICES
GRANDMASTER VERSUS AMATEUR
GRANDMASTER BATTLE MANUAL
REGGIO EMILIA 2007/2008
THE ALTERMAN GAMBIT – WHITE GAMBITS
THE ALTERMAN GAMBIT – BLACK GAMBITS VOLUME 1
THE ALTERMAN GAMBIT – BLACK GAMBITS VOLUME 2
SAN LUIS 2005
ATTACKING THE SPANISH
CUTTING EDGE 1: THE OPEN SICILIAN
CUTTING EDGE 2: SICILIAN NAJDORF 6.Be3

We were pleased to see a couple of positive reviews from the formidable English GM in New In Chess magazine.

First up was Beating Minor Openings by Victor Mikhalevski (awarded 4/5 stars by Sadler). A few quotes:

“The scope of the book is amazing.”

“Mikhalevski has clearly put a massive effort into this work and I can recommend it unreservedly to anyone looking for guidance against an oft neglected part of the repertory.”

“Just a couple of quibbles held me back from giving it the full five stars.”

The quibbles Sadler refers to are:
a) he considers some of the recommended lines to be less-than-ideal choices in terms of yielding winning chances against a weaker opponent; and
b) he would prefer if chess authors (not just Mikhalevski) would make it clearer which of their recommended lines are the product of engine analysis.

The second of these is an interesting observation on what is something of a grey area, as every line in a good opening book will have been computer-checked to some degree. Still, it’s something we will consider for future books. In any case, we were happy to see the generally positive review along with Sadler’s conclusion that “It’s an excellent book”!