If you want to know your opening repertoire well, you need time to memorise it. Some of it will make a lot of sense and some of it will be concrete, but counter-intuitive. Sometimes a line a tempo down is no worse, for example.
I just played a blitz game where I successfully remembered all of John’s analysis on the Alekhine, but ran out of time… As online blitz games have no relevance for the real world, I am still pleased by being able to get all the way to +-. After this I missed mate in four and lost on time in a totally winning position. But who cares…
The main reason I remembered the line, was because of an attractive shot in this position (did not really happen). Often these types of anchors and little nuggets of information helps us remember what comes before.
White to play. What is the strongest continuation?
Find the game here.
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.
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 Judit Polgar’s superb trilogy, then we send Judit’s 3 books in hardback, plus one free extra book.
The previous default option on the free book was Carlsen’s Assault on the Throne. For December and January we will switch the default option to GRANDMASTER VERSUS AMATEUR. 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:
ATTACKING THE SPANISH
CARLSEN’S ASSAULT ON THE THRONE
CHAMPIONS OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM
CUTTING EDGE 1: THE OPEN SICILIAN
CUTTING EDGE 2: SICILIAN NAJDORF 6.Be3
GRANDMASTER BATTLE MANUAL
POSITIONAL CHESS SACRIFICES
REGGIO EMILIA 2007/2008
THE ALTERMAN GAMBIT GUIDE – WHITE GAMBITS
THE ALTERMAN GAMBIT GUIDE – BLACK GAMBITS VOLUME 1
THE ALTERMAN GAMBIT GUIDE – BLACK GAMBITS VOLUME 2
SAN LUIS 2005
TACTIMANIA
Wow, we worked a lot on this book. I spent a decade pressuring Afek to write this book. We even had a contract that he asked to get out of. But finally it is here, the book I dreamt of. This is an obvious candidate from Quality Chess for book of the year.
I know that studies is not to everyone’s taste. What I like about Afek’s creation is that they both have the beauty of studies and the game-like feel I enjoy. Actually, Afek included a study we made together, based on my analysis of a game by a young Carlsen.
If you want to test yourself, I have a small problem for you here.
White to play and win (move 3 of a study)
You can find the solution to this problem in the last example of the PDF excerpt.
Hi guys!
Kallia has updated our website for the academy and it is now ready to receive registrations. At the first camp we had 11 participants, as we had put in a rating barrier of 2300. In the second camp, there will be no rating requirement to participate. We will have a few classes going on at the same time, so they all will be at an appropriate level for everyone. GM Ramesh has already agreed to join me at the camp and Boris Gelfand will be invited if we hit 30 participants.
The camp works well for GMs and for amateurs. GM Adhiban benefitted from the camp (or so he says) and won a tournament in Croatia right after, pushing his rating to 2694, preparing him to be only the 5th Indian player to cross 2700 (after Anand, Harikrishna, Sasikiran and Vidit). The other GMs were very positive as well.
Out of the 11 participants, 10 gave us 9/10 or 10/10. I think 6/10 or 7/10 is more appropriate. We knew we were beginners and we made a lot of small mistakes. The idea with a small camp was to learn before we invite a lot of people for 8-14 May 2019.
Here is a small video we did for ChessBase.in about the camp.
The positional challenge | Quality Chess Academy by GM Jacob Aagaard
At the Quality Chess Academy 1.0 which was held in Crete, Greece from 9-14 November a lot of strong GMs gathered to be trained by Jacob Aagaard and Boris Gelfand. There were different types of training sessions for the players. One of them was positional chess where the players were urged to ask the three questions:1. Which is the worst placed piece?2. What are the weaknesses?3. What is my opponent's idea?Once you ask these three questions you tend to understand what's going on in the position and find the right move. In this challenge GM Jacob Aagaard and GM Arizmendi Martinez pose you with a position from the game Eljanov vs Grischuk. You have to take ten minutes on your clock and find the best move for Black. Can you play like how Grischuk did?
Posted by ChessBase India on Sunday, 25 November 2018
Any 1.d4 players in the house? If so, you may be interested to know that I am currently editing the final volume from the Doctor of d4 himself, and our original Grandmaster Repertoire author, Boris Avrukh!
As most of you know, the original volumes 1&2 (published in 2008 & 2010 respectively – how time flies…) have been revamped into the newer and upgraded volumes: 1A The Catalan, 1B The Queen’s Gambit, 2A King’s Indian & Grünfeld and finally volume 2B will complete the series. This final volume is subtitled “Dynamic Systems” (though I want to rename it “Dynamic Defences” – any opinions?) and will cover the Dutch, various Benoni systems not already covered in the series, the Benko & Budapest Gambits, and anything else which did not feature in the previous volumes.
So far, I am impressed by the vast number of improvements Avrukh has made over his previous work. This is not the time to give away any big novelties, but I can tell you there’s a useful change of direction in an important Dutch line, which I was able to use to good effect in a recent tournament game. I was also surprised when I started working on the Benko Gambit chapters and saw that the Fianchetto (which I have never been a great fan of against the Benko) has been replaced by the traditional main line of 6.Nc3 followed by e2-e4, Kxf1 and so on. After a panic-stricken few minutes of scouring the previous volumes for unwanted Fianchetto Benko transpositions (of which there are none, thankfully!), I am convinced that this is another excellent change.
To sum up, if you are a fan of Avrukh’s existing 1.d4 works, you will love this one too. With that being said, I will get back to editing it…
This summer I had the pleasure to host IM Stany from India at my summer camp in Glasgow. He is a strong and upcoming player in his mid-20s. He found a lot of nice tricks in the exercises and I quickly gave him the nickname Tricky Stany from Trickystan. When Catherine (age 10) asked him where he was from and declined to believe he was from Trickystan, he got seriously outraged: “What? Do you not know of my country?”
This lovely man has now made a new GM-norm. So of course I strong armed him into writing an article for us (and may have lied when I said I had connections that would finally see the UK establish diplomatic connections with Trickystan).
Download the article here, please: Trekking Towards the TITLE.
Small Steps to Giant Improvement by US Champion Sam Shankland is now available in the Chessable format. You can find it here
This is the second of our books we have tried on Chessable after an experiment with The Woodpecker Method as mentioned in a previous blog post. The feedback was favourable, so let’s try another book.
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