Quality Chess Blog

I wrote the following for Twitter.

The process of writing a lot and being a publisher means that you can have times where you almost forget you have a book coming out. Today we will send CONCEPTUAL ROOK ENDGAMES to the printer finally. After John had to be a jury at a serious trial, both rook endgame books were pushed to October. But on the 27th September we will publish ENDGAME LABYRINTHS! @SteffenNielsen8 is my co-author and the current World Champion in study composition. What we have done is a slightly different thing from previous books on the topic. The idea from the book came from a solving group of four people I ran some years back. We were two guys and two girls, trying to solve studies from perhaps the most famous modern book on studies. I finally had it with these way too long solutions, when there was a 30+ move pawn ending. I know that top players find their most significant details on the first three moves in calculation in the middlegame (direction of travel, let’s call it). Sometimes we go deeper in the endgame, and of course we see further ahead. But 30 moves? Not me. I asked Steffen for studies and they were far more solvable, and I actually liked them better than these supposed “best studies of all time”. The idea of creating a book with this sort of material came quickly (of course). I had not imagined just how much work it would be. Although we are two authors of this 424 page book, it took me far more effort than the “less than 900” page A MATTER OF ENDGAME TECHNIQUE that I published in 2022. I think I spent 1000+ hours on this book. It does not try to be a “best studies of all times” book – rather it is a book for strong players wanting to improve their game through solving endgame studies. They are selected for solving. They are cut for solving. They have a point system, designed to keep you honest in your solving. The book will also be available on @ChessTempo and @ForwardChess from the 20th September. Both of these great companies helped us with the checking of the final manuscript and reduced the number of errors significantly. @QualityChess have yet to publish a book without mistakes. This is our best try. We hope you will like it.

Endgame Labyrinths by Steffen Nielsen & Jacob Aagaard will be published on September 27th. You can now read an excerpt. To paraphrase the cover text, this book contains 1002 challenging studies that were selected and truncated to be as useful as possible for the practical player. The excerpt gives even more of a flavour of the book.

The content inside the book is excellent, and I am also a fan of the cover, which is by the Canadian artist Jason Mathis. You might already be familiar with Jason’s work from Jacob’s Grandmaster Preparation series.

We are continuing our free-fourth-book 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.

Please note that if you buy a Special Offer and are in the EU zone, we will add one free book. For example, if a European buys the Special Offer on our award-winning Grandmaster Preparation series, then we would send the 6 hardcovers, plus one free extra book.

The previous default option on the free book was GRANDMASTER VERSUS AMATEUR (HARDCOVER).

For September and October, we will switch the default option to CARLSEN’S ASSAULT ON THE THRONE. 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 number, asking to have it replaced with one of the following titles:

ATTACKING THE SPANISH
CHAMPIONS OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM
CUTTING EDGE 1: THE OPEN SICILIAN
CUTTING EDGE 2: SICILIAN NAJDORF 6.Be3
GRANDMASTER BATTLE MANUAL
GRANDMASTER VERSUS AMATEUR (HARDCOVER)
REGGIO EMILIA 2007/2008
TACTIMANIA
THE ALTERMAN GAMBIT GUIDE – BLACK GAMBITS VOLUME 1
THE ALTERMAN GAMBIT GUIDE – BLACK GAMBITS VOLUME 2