Because GM5 is “only” 280 pages, I have decided to cut the price down to 24.99 for the softcover and 32.99 for hardback edition. Those that have pre-paid will receive a refund of the 3 euro difference somewhere in the next few weeks. The reason this does not happen immediately, is because I have to work out how to do it!
We have finally got a date confirmed from the printer. The Christmas catalogues are starting to get in and they need to be printed, but we managed to get slots for
Here is our general overview. As always I avoid being too specific, as I don’t want to disappoint anyone.
| Christian Bauer | Play the Scandinavian | 17 October |
| Mihail Marin | Grandmaster Repertoire 4 – The English Opening vol. 2 | 17 October |
| Mihail Marin | Grandmaster Repertoire 5 – The English Opening vol. 3 | 17 October |
| Tibor Karolyi | Karpov’s Strategic Wins: Volume 1 – 1961-1985 | Dec/Jan |
| Tibor Karolyi | Karpov’s Strategic Wins: Volume 2 – 1986 – 2009 | Dec/Jan |
| John Shaw | The King’s Gambit | Dec/Jan |
| Artur Yusupov | Boost your Chess 3 | Dec/Jan |
| Vassilios Kotronias | The Grandmaster Battle Manual | Dec/Jan |
| Boris Avrukh | GM Repertoire 8 – The Grunfeld Defence | 2011 |
| Milos Pavlovic | The Cutting Edge 2 – The Najdorf Sicilian without 6.Bg5 | 2011 |
| Aagaard, Shaw (editors) | Experts on the Anti-Sicilian | 2011 |
| Vladimir Popov | Chess Lessons | 2011 |
| Aagaard, Shaw (editors) | Grandmaster versus Amateur | 2011 |
| Boris Alterman | Alterman Gambit Guide – Black Gambits | 2011 |
| Artur Yusupov | Chess Evolution 1 | 2011 |
| Suba | Positional Chess Sacrifices | 2011 |
| Milos Pavlovic | The Cutting Edge 3 – The Najdorf Sicilian with 6.Bg5 | 2011 |
| Martin Weteschnik | Understanding Chess Tactics 2nd edition | 2011 |
| Sabino Brunello | Cutting Edge 4 – The Nimzo-Indian | 2011 |
| Vassilios Kotronias | Grandmaster Repertoire – The King’s Indian Defence 1 | 2011 |
| Vassilios Kotronias | Grandmaster Repertoire – The King’s Indian Defence 2 | 2011 |
| Romanovsky | Soviet Middlegame Technique | 2011 |
| David Vigorito | Play the Semi-Slav 2 | 2011 |
| Tiger Hillarp Persson | Middlegame book – TITLE NOT CONFIRMED | 2011 |
| Artur Yusupov | Chess Evolution 2 | 2011 |
| Jacob Aagaard | Thinking Inside the Box | 2011/12 |
| Jacob Aagaard | Train your Chess Intuition | 2011/12 |
Dear Quality Chess Reader,
We recently received encouragement from England: Champions of the New Millennium and Jacob’s Attacking Manual 1 and Attacking Manual 2 were placed on the shortlist for the ECF Book of the Year prize. These were the only books we put forward for the prize and the judges’ comments were flattering.
Publication News: Play the Scandinavian by GM Christian Bauer will be out in late September. The French Super-GM is a noted expert on the 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 3.Nc3 Qa5 lines on which his book concentrates.
GM Mihail Marin will soon complete his repertoire for White with 1.c4: Grandmaster Repertoire 4 and Grandmaster Repertoire 5 should be out in October.
GM Boris Avrukh’s Grandmaster Repertoire 2 will be available in a German translation in late September. A hardcover version of the English version is available on our website and soon also in shops in Europe, plus probably Chess4Less and ChessCafe in the USA.
We are continuing our new idea of including a ChessBase file with the newsletter. This time it includes:
An update and some comments on Ftacnik’s Grandmaster Repertoire 6
A few updates on Schandorff’s Grandmaster Repertoire 7 – mainly relating to small things lacking in the book.
A nice game Andrew lost at the British, but also a win where he used an Avrukh novelty (“I well and truly Avrukhed him,”; Andrew told me.)
This ChessBase file is also available as a pdf printout for those without ChessBase – the same goes for the first newsletter.
More will follow about Grandmaster Repertoire 6 in another newsletter in a few weeks.
Regards, John Shaw
Chief Editor,
Earlier today we got a phonecall from Ray Edwards, head of the three-man committee deciding the Book of the Year by the English Chess Federation. We were pleased to be nominated, this year with two books. The short list of candidates looks like this:
1) Yasser Seirawan: Chess Duels
2) John Nunn: Understanding Chess Endgames
3) Kopec, Ftacnik & Browne: Champions of the New Millennium
4) Jacob Aagaard: Attacking Manual 1+2
It is very pleasing to have both the books we sent in (each publisher can only send two books) nominated. Whatever the final choice, this is a big moment for Quality Chess – and the authors as well, of course.
See the committee’s reasonings.
The company which runs the servers for our website and e-mails tells us we have had intermittent server outages during the past week. It is possible e-mails we have sent have not been received. Or maybe e-mails you sent to us have not reached us. It’s all a mystery. Apologies if there are any resulting mix-ups. This is beyond our control, but we shall sort it out as quickly as possible.
Meanwhile, Andrew is back from the British Championship. No GM norm and he was rather off-form early on, but a storming finish got Andrew into the prizes at 3rd=.
Jacob returns today from the Politiken Cup in Copenhagen. In the Danish league Jacob is a team-mate of our author GM Lars Schandorff. Jacob and Lars had agreed that the team’s board order would be decided by their Tournament Performance Rating in the Politiken Cup. Lars 2478, Jacob 2479. A clear victory.
I am away from the office playing in the Politiken Cup (4/5 so far). But here is a current estimate of when the various books will be available, and the order I expect them to come out.
| Christian Bauer | Play the Scandinavian | September |
| Mihail Marin | Grandmaster Repertoire 4 – The English Opening vol. 2 | September |
| Mihail Marin | Grandmaster Repertoire 5 – The English Opening vol. 3 | September |
| Tibor Karolyi | Karpov’s Strategic Wins: Volume 1 – 1961-1985 | September/October |
| Tibor Karolyi | Karpov’s Strategic Wins: Volume 2 – 1986 – 2009 | September/October |
| John Shaw | The King’s Gambit | September/October |
| Boris Avrukh | GM Repertoire 8 – The Grunfeld Defence | LATER |
| Milos Pavlovic | The Cutting Edge 2 – The Najdorf Sicilian without 6.Bg5 | LATER |
| Mihail Marin | Common Grandmaster Mistakes – and how to avoid them | LATER |
| Artur Yusupov | Boost your Chess 3 | LATER |
| Bauer, Aagaard (editors) | Experts on the Anti-Sicilian | Jan-11 |
| Boris Alterman | Alterman Gambit Guide – Black Gambits | NEXT YEAR |
| Vassilios Kotronias | Middlegame book – TITLE NOT CONFIRMED | LATER |
| Various | Grandmaster versus Amateur | NEXT YEAR |
| Milos Pavlovic | The Cutting Edge 3 – The Najdorf Sicilian with 6.Bg5 | LATER |
| Various | Grandmaster versus Amateur | NEXT YEAR |
| Jacob Aagaard | Grandmaster Repertoire x1 – 1.e4 – Ruy Lopez | NEXT YEAR |
| Jacob Aagaard | Grandmaster Repertoire x2 – 1.e4 – Sicilian | NEXT YEAR |
| Jacob Aagaard | Grandmaster Repertoire x3 – 1.e4 – French/Caro-Kann | NEXT YEAR |
| Jacob Aagaard | Grandmaster Repertoire x4 – 1.e4 other e5s | NEXT YEAR |
| Jacob Aagaard | Thinking Inside the Box | NEXT YEAR |
| Jacob Aagaard | Train your Chess Intuition | NEXT YEAR |
| Tiger Hillarp Persson | Middlegame book – TITLE NOT CONFIRMED | NEXT YEAR |
Dear Quality Chess Reader,
We have now published two new books. GM Repertoire 6: The Sicilian Defence by GM Lubomir Ftacnik and The Quality Chess Puzzle Book by GM John Shaw.
GM Repertoire 6: The Sicilian Defence provides a sharp, complete repertoire for Black after 1.e4 c5.
The Quality Chess Puzzle Book offers 735 challenging puzzles to entertain and instruct the reader.
An innovation for this newsletter is a link to a ChessBase file with 22 games annotated by the Quality Chess team. In this case mainly GM Jacob Aagaard with a couple of contributions by GM John Shaw.
Quality Chess proudly sponsors chess events from time to time. Previously we have sponsored a rapid event in Edinburgh, the 2009 Scottish Championship, an IM-tournament in Edinburgh 2009, as well as the best game prizes at the Politiken Cup in 2006, 2009 and the forthcoming 2010 edition. We also recently sponsored the best game prizes in the 2010 Danish and Swedish Championships. The first 9 games in the file are all winners of a daily best game prize from the Swedish event. We have inserted an automatic question here and there to test those who are interested. Please enable your “Training Function” in order to allow yourself to be tested. There is also a position from our recent title Soviet Chess Strategy that also has a very nice puzzle, and quite a hard one.
Naturally we take an interest in how the lines suggested in our books fare after publication. A few of the other games are relevant to our opening books. One high-level example was Leko – Le Quang Liem from the elite Dortmund tournament. Black won after following for 12 moves the line recommended by GM Lars Schandorff in GM Repertoire 7: The Caro-Kann
Regards, Chief Editor John Shaw
The Scottish Championship concluded on Saturday in Hamilton. Our IM Andrew Greet was first on a very fine 7.5/9 while GM John Shaw (that would be me) finished a half point behind. So Andrew is Scottish Champion? Maybe. He was certainly awarded the trophy at the prize giving, but was he eligible? He is extremely English and has lived in Scotland for less than two years, so although he could play in the event (it was an international open) maybe the organisers gave him my nice shiny silver cup. The organisers are currently reading the rulebook rather closely…
The key game of the event was in Round 3 when Andrew Greet crushed me very efficiently. But let’s forget about that. In the previous round I won a sacrificial game against Andrew’s near namesake Andrew Green, so that’s the game to look at.
J. Shaw – A. Green, Scottish Championship 2010
1.e4 Nf6 2.e5 Nd5 3.d4 d6 4.Nf3 dxe5 5.Nxe5 c6 6.Nd2 Nd7 7.Ndf3 g6 8.Bc4 Bg7 9.0–0 0–0 10.Re1 Nxe5 11.dxe5
I thought 11.Nxe5 Be6 looked very solid for Black; in fact it turns out to be the main line.
11…Bg4 12.h3 Bxf3 13.Qxf3 e6 14.a4 Qc7 15.Qe4 Rfd8 16.h4 Rd7 17.h5 Ne7
Perhaps 17…Qd8 to stop Bg5.
18.Bg5 c5 19.c3 Nc6 20.hxg6 hxg6 21.Bf6 Na5
22.Bxe6!!
A rather obvious sac to analyse, but I took some time to convince myself that it was sound.
22…fxe6 23.Qxg6
The plan is a rook lift to e3 (or e4) and then turn right to the g- or h-file. It seems a little slow, but Black cannot arrange a defence.
23…Qc6
Black had too many defensive tries for me to analyse them all before sacrificing. A couple of fun lines are:
23…Nb3 24.Re3!? Nxa1 25.Rh3 and White wins.
23…Nc6 24.Re3 Rf7 25.Rh3 Ne7 26.Rh8+! Kxh8 27.Qxf7 Bxf6 28.Qxf6+ Kh7 29.Qf7+ Kh8 30.c4! And Ra3-h3 is a good swinger.
24.Re3 Rf8 25.Rh3 Rc8
After 25…Rff7 I planned Bxg7 when Black cannot recapture due to mate on e8, but also good is 26.Qh7+ Kf8 27.Qh8+ Bxh8 28.Rxh8#.
26.Qh7+ Kf8 27.Rg3
Black resigned, as mate is unavoidable.
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