Quality Chess Blog

Thank you all for the debate on the reviews. As is normal, most people supported my point of view (which is why they read this blog in general, I assume), so I want to especially want to thank those that disagreed. A debate is more interesting if you have more than one point of view represented. I still disagree, but I appreciate you for making your opinion present, especially when immediately a few people will jump up and say we should not listen to you. On the contrary, we should, but use our sound judgement of course.

Today I spotted another review of one of our books: Chess Evolution 1 – The Fundamentals. It is generally favourable (5/6), but has some quite fair complaints about the book:

“Given the confusing structure of this nine-volume series of instructional books, it seems as if the publisher took a page from the George Lucas handbook. The course is made-up of three series, each with three levels: The Fundamentals, Beyond the Basics, and Mastery.”

This is the start and the reviewer returns to the point a few times. Yes, the series is not well structured in the way we have done it. We did it to ourselves, of course. What happened was that we took on volume 1 of each of Artur’s three serieses and then later on changed our minds and took all three. Suddenly we were trapped.

The other criticism we recognise extremely well is that the volume is meant to be easy (the German title actually translates pretty closely into “how to reach 1500 in elo”). We killed this German title and all connection to it in the marketing (but had to keep it in the book) because we found it entirely bonkers. As an example, I had three of my students solve exercises from Boost your Chess 3. Of 56 points they scored 55 (rated 2650), 52 (rated 2560) and 38 (rated 2250 – with one IM-norm). So this is what is needed to get to 2100? No, clearly you are much better than that if you know all the stuff in these books! My guess is beyond 2400, if you have the practical experience as well.

Michael McGuerty writes it like this:

“Yusupov writes that the material targets three groups according to rating strength: under Elo 1500, under Elo 1800, and under Elo 2100. Even so, the lessons are at a very high level. Consider that the following two examples are the from the first lesson, “Combinations involving bishops,” in Chess Evolution 1: The Fundamentals, which is the third book of the Fundamentals Series (given here without the accompanying deep analysis):”

Then he goes on to give a few examples of how difficult the exercises actually are. And they are quite challenging indeed.

An excellent review, which seems entirely flawless to me. Maybe he rates the book too highly? This is probably the only place where anyone would seriously disagree with him!

 

I used to review for SKAKBLADET, the Danish Federation’s magazine, but was axed because I became a publisher. I then continued reviewing for Chess Today, where I had the principle of not reviewing books I could not recommend, because I was a publisher. Still other publishers complained and I was axed 8-). I reviewed only to advise people honestly and because I love books, but it seems that my opinions are not welcome. Ok, never mind. More time for writing now that I am no longer officially a reader!

More importantly, as a publisher we have had to consider what to do with reviewers and reviews. Very early on we worked out a few basic principles: 1) Not to send copies to reviewers that gave everyone a glorious review. 2) Not to argue with reviewers. 3) Not to care about bad reviews, although we want to take the points raised seriously.

We did violate 2&3 on one occasion, when a prominent reviewer butchered a book based on almost entirely wrong claims. We did so respectfully and have continued to send books to him.

Now I am about to break rule 2 again. Honestly I am not bothered about the likes and dislikes of these reviewers, for reasons that shall become apparent below. But I think there is an important point (see headline) that is worth raising about reviews of chess books in general. So, reading two recent reviews I could not help noticing how people can have some initial expectations and even after realising that the books are not what they expected, they continue to measure them against these expectations, directly or indirectly.

The first review I want to comment on can be found at Chessville and is of Experts on the Anti-Sicilian edited by John and myself.

The reviewer Bill McGeary is not known to us, but I have read a few of his other reviews in order to see if I can pinpoint his way of thinking. I am not sure I was successful, but I think it is fair to say that he is speaking generally from personal experience and in general finds chess books to be expensive…

The first quote from his review that caught my eye was this:

It seems that each co-author would delve into specific areas and work on them solely. The advantage to this is that the reader can get material that is more detailed, usually on a line the co-author uses, and can hear the ideas of a higher level player on those lines. The disadvantage is that the book buyer sometimes pays for material that is highly irrelevant to them. I guess it all depends on what the public is looking for?

The underlining is mine, because it shows a thinking we will see later on. However, it is faulty. At 440 pages Experts on the Anti-Sicilian is longer than most of our books, but prices the same as the others. This is of course intentional from our side, because we know that no one will be interested in everything in this book.

There are things I would want to question just about everywhere, but let us just take a few examples:

Back to the table of contents. I noticed chapter 12 “A Ten Minute Repertoire against the Closed Sicilian” by GM Pavlovic was eight pages. So off I went. It seems that the GM likes playing the Botvinnik setup as Black in the Closed Sicilian 1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.g3 g6 4.Bg2 Bg7 5.d3 d6 and either 6.f4 e5 or 6.Be3 e5. This section seemed too rushed to me, the author throws sequences of moves out and then pronounces that Black is fine. This just didn’t set well with me.

Obviously the reviewer wanted the chapter to be something else. But reading his explanations, you cannot get around that Pavlovic has produced exactly what he said he had produced.

What really took me off guard was the eight chapters by GM Cornette on the “Tiviakov Grand Prix” 1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.Bb5. It dawned on me that I had simply assumed from the title that this was a book aimed specifically for players of the Black pieces, now I was realizing that I had been mistaken.

The title is on not against or similar. But ok, others have made the misconception. Still, the first ever serious treatment of this interesting line with tons of new analysis is hardly making the book worse, or is it? Later on the review writes:

Aside from that misunderstanding I have to say that the book is disappointing anyway. Ten out of 25 chapters are dealing with the Black side and five of those chapters are 8 pages, 4 pages, 11 pages, 8 pages and 7 pages. The best material for the Black player are the two chapters by Hillarp-Persson I mentioned, and GM Aagaard’s look at the Classical 2.c3 Sicilain, a very complete chapter.

So, am I disappointed because there is so much material for White? To be honest, yes – a little. More than that is the amount of material that was poorly researched or written (read my comments above about the Kings Indian Attack chapter) and how much of is seemed redundant. There are eight chapters on 1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.Bb5 and three of them are followed by chapters where the author suggest White’s play is better than the previous chapter.

Let us start with the out-right mistakes. First of all, as previously understood by the reviewer, this is not a repertoire book for Black. Actually, it is hardly a repertoire book at all. So why does he continue to write as if it should have been? Secondly, these eight chapters by Cornette are help up against the rest of the book as if they are massive. One of them is only 2 pages! My 2.c3-Chapter could have been four chapters and the balance in chapters would be different?! I cannot help but feel the reviewer is back at his main argument about “paying for what you do not need”.

But it is also completely incorrect to say that Bauer’s and Cornette’s chapters are only useful for white players. Both players look at various lines objectively and in all five lines Black comes out on the other side with equality. Bauer at some point clearly states that this line is nothing, unless people are not well prepared, with the point that people often are entirely unprepared for it.

This is not to say the reviewer did not have some interesting opinions. But he was not reviewing the book we published as much as the book he expected us to publish.

This is also the case with the second case I want to raise:

The review is of The Grandmaster Battle Manual by Kotronias and is written by Michael Goeller. It would be unfair to mark the reviwers, but I would like to say that I have no issues with Mr Goeller’s general effort (on the contrary, he did a great, but not flawless, job). I am not going to go on too much about this review (you need to get back to work and in all fairness – so do I), but  I do want to point to a section in the beginning of the review:

[The Grandmaster Battle Manual] sets a similar high standard, though perhaps a bit higher than most of us are able to reach. While it is ultimately a good collection of deeply annotated GM games, it does not provide the middlegame primer that it promises. The themes it covers seem idiosyncratic more than systematic in their selection, the games too often seem stretched to fit the chapter rather than specifically chosen to illustrate the theme, and the implied reader seems expected to know much more than the general chess readership.

You are probably on to me already. Indeed, nowhere does Kotronias or Quality Chess say that this is a middlegame primer. Actually, the title was meant to hint that the book is pretty advanced, which apparently has not reached everyone. We need to think about this, but for now let us just say that the book is very advanced, is not a primer, does not promise to give full coverage of the middlegame or anything of that sort.In the last decade half of all chess books published (more or less) have promised full understanding of a complex area in 128 pages (ok, occasionally more) and this seems to have become the expectation from a good part of the chess readers out there. Most recent we have 60 minute videos by ChessBase on various openings. Fine as a surprise weapon in the club championship, but insufficient for a game against a good player in an open tournament.

Quality Chess will of course publish primers from time to time and do so to the best of our ability. Most recently Chess Tactics from Scratch, which we think is an excellent book. But we will also publish books that aim higher and where not everyone can understand/follow everything. We will not apologise for this. Chess is difficult and requires an effort to understand. Just as anything else which is worth while spending your time on. We try to help, but we do not offer false promises.

Two friends of mine are teaching chess at schools in Denmark. Recently they were trawling the corridors looking for new recruits for the chess club. They found some 13 year olds sitting against the wall sulking.
“Are you not supposed to be at class,” Marie asked.
“Our teacher is absent. We were supposed to have sexual education,” one of the kids replied.
“Well, we can teach you a bit,” Nikolaj tried, pointing to the chess board. “In chess, sometimes the king takes the queen.” A wink was included to show how street he was (or something).
“What happens if the king takes the horse,” on kid asked.
“And what if the bishop takes the little ones,” another asked.

I feel bullied and pushed into publishing an updated publishing schedule. As you will see it is rather full and we are very busy. So for now I will leave it at that.

Lars Schandorff	Playing 1.d4 – GM Guide – The Queen’s Gambit	May
Lars Schandorff	Playing 1.d4 – GM Guide – The Indian Defences	May
Artur Yusupov	Chess Evolution 2	May/June
John Shaw	The King’s Gambit	May/June
Boris Avrukh	GM Repertoire X – Beating 1.d4 Sidelines	June/July
Jacob Aagaard	Attacking Manual 1 – German	June/July
Ftacnik	GM6a – Dealing with Anti–Sicilians	July
Ftacnik	GM6b – The Najdorf	July
John Shaw	Playing 1.e4 – GM Guide – Caro–Kann, 1…e5 & Minor Lines	July
John Shaw	Playing 1.e4 – GM Guide II – The Sicilian & The French	July
Jacob Aagaard	GM Preparation – Calculation (Hardcover)	May/June
Jacob Aagaard	GM Preparation – Positional Play (Hardcover)	June/July
Jacob Aagaard	GM Preparation – Strategic Play (Hardcover)	July/August
Jacob Aagaard	GM Preparation – Endgame Play (Hardcover)	September
Jacob Aagaard	GM Preparation – Thinking Inside the Box (Hardcover)	October
Jacob Aagaard	GM Preparation – Calculation	October
Jacob Aagaard	GM Preparation – Positional Play	October
Jacob Aagaard	GM Preparation – Strategic Play	October
Jacob Aagaard	GM Preparation – Endgame Play	October
Jacob Aagaard	GM Preparation – Thinking Inside the Box	October
Jacob Aagaard	Attacking Manual 2 – German	September
Judit Polgar	Judit Polgar Teaches Chess 1 – How I Beat Fischer’s Record	September
Romanovsky	Soviet Middlegame Technique	October
Artur Yusupov	Chess Evolution 3	November
Victor Mikhalevski	GM Repertoire – The Open Spanish	LATER
Tibor Karolyi	Mikhail Tal’s best games 1	LATER
Jacob Aagaard	GM Repertoire x1 – 1.e4 – Sicilian	LATER
Marc Esserman	Mayhem in the Morra	LATER
Nikos (w/Jacob Aagaard)	Playing the French	LATER
Nick Pert	GM Repertoire X – Classical Slav	LATER

Dear Quality Chess Reader,

We have two new books on the way – both would be aptly described as instructive and entertaining.

The title of Mihai Suba’s book is Positional Chess Sacrifices and that describes the lively content well – the Romanian GM has won the British Chess Federation’s Book of the Year prize for a previous book and we hope this one will be equally well received.

The Alterman Gambit Guide – Black Gambits 2 completes GM Boris Alterman’s 3-volume instructional series. Black Gambits 2 covers and explains various gambits that Black can unleash after 1.e4 e5. Lines covered include the Marshall Attack, Traxler variation and even the splendidly named Frankenstein-Dracula variation.

Both books will be sent from Quality Chess on the 16th of April, so shops will have them from the 17th and 18th.

Quality Chess has a new British Champion in our ranks – GM Colin McNab is the British Solving Champion. In second and third place were grandmasters Jonathan Mestel and John Nunn, who are both former World Champions in solving. A true-but-sounds-false story is that one of Colin’s first contributions to Quality Chess, while proofreading, was spotting a mate-in-one the editors had overlooked – presumably this was not much of a challenge for Colin.

Readers may be interested to follow some of our authors who are in action over-the-board. The immensely strong European Individual Championship features almost 200 GMs including “our” Vassilios Kotronias, Sabino Brunello, Matthieu Cornette and Mihail Marin.

At the end of this month Jacob will compete in the Danish Championship.

The chess file this month (pgn and pdf) contains analysis of topical openings, as usual, but also a couple of mind-bending puzzles from Colin’s solving victory.

Regards,
John Shaw
Chief Editor
Quality Chess

For the third year in a row a Quality Chess book was awarded the Opening Book of the Year honour by the good people roaming the ChessPub forum. In 2009 Marin won it for Grandmaster Repertoire 3 – The English Opening Volume 1. In 2010 Boris Avrukh won it for Grandmaster Repertoire 2 – 1.d4 volume 2. This year it is Avrukh again, taking in most votes for Grandmaster Repertoire 8 and Grandmaster Repertoire 9 – his two volumes on the Grunfeld Defence.

The votes fell line this.

Obviously I am disappointed that people did not give it to the Tarrasch, but this is the price for writing on a fringe opening. Also, note that another great opening book from 2011 – The Safest Grunfeld from Chess Stars is not on the list. Exactly why that is, I do not know. I am sure Boris would have won anyway, but it would have been nice if it had been included.

You can find the forum post here.

I spent almost eight years writing the Attacking Manuals two books (AM1 and AM2) and felt absolutely drained at the end of the process. Obviously I did a lot of things in the meanwhile, but mainly I felt anxiety about my ability to reach the necessary level for making these books as good as I wanted them to be. Completing the GM title and becoming British Champion definitely helped. 2007 was a very tough year for Quality Chess and for me personally, but ended on a high by the birth of my first child.

We are now speaking more than four years later. Attacking Manual 2 came out in 2010 and I won the ECF book of the year award for the two volumes combined. In the end it was all worth it.

Enter the room in February 2011: Nikos (Nikolaos Ntirlis). Unknown outside Greece and to many Greeks as well, close to unrated (would have preferred to be) and full of ideas. I was so fascinated that I entered a mad project – the complete revival of the Tarrasch Defence. The result was Grandmaster Repertoire 10 – The Tarrasch Defence. We both worked so hard that Nikos went from criticising all books on the Chesspub forum to praising anyone who write an opening book and live to tell the tale!

But was it worth it? Well, initial sales have been good. People are interested (which is far more important to us than money – though we need to pay the rent of course). This is more important than the reviews, but the reviews are easier to pass on, so here we go:

The first one is from the Danish newspaper Politiken. Their chess journalist is a sometimes 2600 Danish GM who sent a private message to me on Facebook calling me insane – based on the work we had done with the book. He claimed we were making amateurs into GMs with it, which I would contest. But we have definitely given them a fighting chance against GMs!

The actual review looks like this in my translation:

“Most opening books are a collection of existing knowledge and a few extra ideas in critical positions. This is not the case with Jacob Aagaard’s and Nikolaos Ntirlis’ (called Nikos) new book on the Tarrasch Defence in the Queen’s Gambit. The book is the result of a large piece of research where the two authors have succeeded in turning completely new pages in opening theory.

Before The Tarrasch Defence was published the opening was considered dubious, but now that it is here, all super-GMs have been recalled to the laboratory. All main lines have been repaired, including those no one knew were broken. Have a look: 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 c5 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Nf3 Nc6 6.dxc5! This line has always been considered completely harmless, but it is not and is handled over 37 pages! (Don’t fear – Black will be all right in the end.) The book is ground breaking and sets new standards for the future of opening books.”

GM Sune Berg Hansen

This is of course very flattering, but it is not necessarily the most positive review we have received. The German FM Christof Sielecki makes youtube lectures, freely available. He said:

“The authors invested an enormous amount of time. The amount of novelties and really astonishing ideas presented here can only mean that they invested hundreds of hours to make this an interesting and really fighting choice.”

But to get his excitement you really need to listen to the 30 minute lecture (which also explains some details from the book and some we shamefully omitted about move orders).

There was also a nice review in German (you are one like away if you go here) and a nice review on ChessCafe where the only criticism I could find (and you do look for them when you “only” get 5/6 in the review!) was that the book was irrelevant to players under 1400. As most opening books are, I don’t really care for this.

However, the best review of all was from Arne Moll, the notoriously harsh ChessVibes reviewer (which is why we love him. People like Elburg that loves all books are nice people, but don’t guide the customer in a meaningful way, we think). He said among other tings:

“The two authors… present so many fresh and fascinating ideas in this old opening that it’s impossible to put down. It’s also a very objective and sensible book, in which the old opening is both treated with respect and is challenged to defend itself against computer-age scrutiny and rigour.

I could go on and on about the many beautiful variations in this book, but the truth is that it is crammed with fantastic stuff – really too much to mention in one review. So let me just say that the authors treat the ever-important Timman Variation (9.dxc5 Bxc5 10.Bg5 d4 11.Bxf6 Qxf6 12.Nd5) with due adoration and skepticism (I’ve always felt the line to be both overestimated and underestimated at the same time!). Here, too, they improve existing theory as they go along in many crucial lines.”

The full review is very well written and gives an honest image of our book from someone who likes it. If you are wondering if you want to read the book (or even pay good money for it!) please read this first.

Recently a reader wrote to me and mentioned that the same position was considered two different places in The Tarrasch Defence, with slightly different annotations. The suggestion was in both cases not to play like this, but it was still an interesting point. No matter how obsessively you work, you cannot avoid mistakes.

Similarly at some point in Delchev’s new book on the Reti he writes the following: “It is true that Mihail Marin has spent tons of ink on it in his The English Opening, Volume 2, but in fact his work has hardly advanced theory any further.” Harsh words, but apparently he did not like this lines in this specific variation. We have heard different feedback from 2700+ (sometimes ++) players about the Marin books, but maybe not all chapters were equally strong?

Or is this what happens when your editor is only 13 years old? (By the way, Happy Birthday Semko!)

No. Writing chess books is just damn hard. What you think might be interesting is routinely trashed by the readers. No matter how much work you put into your work and how obsessively you look for mistakes, they will always be there. Sometimes it is a harmless transposition to a note that is missed as above, but you are not always this lucky.

We all remember this blog post (?!).

Well, Vitiugov is back with a new edition of his book on the French, probably a combination of end of the line for the first print and a lot of serious work. I have been browsing in the book for the two days I have had it (thank you for the freebie Semko!) and find it a really interesting book worth the money several times over.

This does not mean that I am not going to get my “revenge” for the remark on the Marin book.

In the line starting with:

1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. e5 Nfd7 5. f4 c5 6. Nf3 Nc6 7. Be3 Qb6 8. Na4 Qa5+ 9. c3 cxd4 10. b4 Nxb4 11. cxb4 Bxb4+ 12. Bd2 Bxd2+ 13. Nxd2 O-O 14. Bd3 b5 15. Nb2 Nb6 16. O-O Nc4 17. Nbxc4

17…dxc4

Vitiugov claims that the theoretical debates have recently centred around this move. I am not sure what went wrong for him. Maybe he wrote the moves down in Word and did not check the moves with a chess board or program. It only took me two seconds to see that this is completely wrong when looking at the diagram in the book and the variation he gave. But being not too overconfident, I checked with a computer (and database!) and confirmed that this is not playable.

More and more games are played (as well as becoming available) after:

17… bxc4 18. Bxh7+ Kxh7 19. Qh5+ Kg8 20.Nf3 g6 21. Qh6 Qc7 22. f5 f6

(22… exf5 23. Rae1 is totally toast, I think. 5-0 in the database. Most recently: 23…f6 24. exf6 Qh7 25. Qf4 Qf7 26. Re7 Qxf6 27. Rfe1 Rf7 28. Rxf7 Kxf7 29. Ng5+ Kg7 30. Qc7+ Kh6 31. Qh7+ Kxg5 32. g3 1-0 Zherebukh – Jaiswal, New Delhi 2011.)

23. fxg6 Qg7 24. Qh4, when I do not believe in the Black position at all. 24…Qh8 25. Qxd4 Ba6 26. Nh4

(26. Qc3 Rae8 27. Nd4 f5 28. Rae1 White has a big advantage. 28…f4 29. Rf3 Qh4 30. Qa5 c3 31. Qxc3 Bc4 32. Kh1 Re7 33. Qb4 1-0 Colin – Haraldsson, ICCF 2010)

26… f5

(26… fxe5 27. Qg4 Rfe8 28. Rf7 with a winning attack.)

27.Nxf5 led to a winning attack in Avotins – Hladecek, e-mail 2009.

18.Bxh7+ Kxh7 19. Qh5+ Kg8

Here Vitiugov only gives 20.Nf3, failing to spot the reason why White is eager to take on c4 on move 17.

20. Ne4! Rd8

20… f6 21. Nxf6+! 1-0 Secer – Gurcan, Konya 2010. White wins after: 21…Rxf6

(21…gxf6 22. Qg6+ Kh8 23. Rf3 is mate.)

22. exf6 Bb7 23. f7+ Kf8 24. Rae1 Bd5

(24… Qxa2 25. Rf2 Qa6 26. f5)

25. f5 Qxa2 26. Re2

21. Ng5 An obvious novelty.

21. Rf3 d3 22. Rh3 Kf8 23. Qg5 Qb6+ 24. Kh1 Ke8 25. Qxg7 Qd4 was not completely clear in Bulatov – Yuzhakov, Kurgan 2010, and Black escaped with a draw.

21… Qc7 22. f5 exf5 23. Qh7+ Kf8 24. Qh8+ Ke7 25. Qxg7 White is evidently winning.

25…Rf8

25… Re8 26. Qxf7+ Kd8 27. Qd5+ Qd7 28. Qxa8 with an extra rook and limited counterplay.

26. e6 Qc5 27. Rae1 d3+ 28. Kh1 d2 29. Re5

If this was a game, 1-0 would be the next text.

If you are at all interested in these two books, please get them from your nearest chess supplier. But don’t forget that Quality Chess gets the last word and the last laugh!