Quality Chess Blog

I have been back for a few days from my trip to Tehran, where the second round of the Women’s World Championship has just finished. I went as a coach for Sabina Foisor, who found herself with changed circumstances that are too personal and complex for us to mention here. Once there, she played really well, fought like a lioness and did what we had agreed in advance, which was to take a full swing at her 250-points higher rated opponent. After a good first game, where her opponent almost over-pressed, as we had suspected she might, Sabina had White in the second game and would go into the next round with a win. She played a great game up to a point, but had spent too much time and went in the wrong direction and got a bad position. At some point it was lost in one move, but she resisted and at a later point she could have entered a very fragile, but possible drawing, zone. She did not and eventually went down.

Sabina Foisor (thanks to David Llada for the photo)

Some people have been eager to criticize from far away the arrangement of the tournament. Read more…

The answer to the above questions is surely books and DVDs. However, with this huge wealth of material out there, it is easy to be completely confused. It is difficult to pinpoint on only one book, because different people at different levels have different requirements. However, I would like to tell you the story that happened with me yesterday:

Read more…

The poll result shows that almost three quarters of you are not following the Women’s World Championship. I would ask you who you think will win, but if most of you are not following it, you are probably not bothered. Perhaps Hou Yifan’s absence devalues the event in your eyes?

The next question involves my geographical curiosity: Where are you?

For the poll answers I have split the planet up into a few bite-sized chunks. As we are mainly an English-language publisher, it would make sense if most blog readers here were from the British Isles (for non-locals, that includes the UK and Ireland) and North America. But I am sure there is some variety.

If you like, feel free to give a more detailed location in comments. But if ‘Antarctica’ and ‘Other’ get a lot of votes, then I’ll be very suspicious.

Our previous poll question was: “Hou Yifan deliberately lost her final-round game in Gibraltar in protest about her pairings. Do you sympathize with her decision?”

An overwhelming majority voted for “No”.

Hou Yifan is the current Women’s World Champion, but not for much longer, as she will not be playing in the 2017 event for which play starts this Saturday in Tehran, Iran. There could be dozens of different questions asked about the location, politics or ethics, but let’s stick to a chess fan’s point of view: Will you be following the Women’s World Championship live?

Top seed in Iran is China’s Ju Wenjun who won the Women’s top prize at Gibraltar with a 2731 performance, beating Hou Yifan along the way. A fine performance overshadowed by the Grob.

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