A few weeks ago Tobias told us in a blog comment that the Forward Chess version of Grandmaster Repertoire 17 – The Classical Slav did not work correctly. The navigation did not guide the reader through the book as it should. We checked and Tobias was absolutely right. The best fix was to start from scratch and convert the book into Forward Chess format again. And that is what was done. Of course doing the work again costs money, but we need our books to work as planned.
So if you have bought the Forward Chess version of The Classical Slav then I suggest deleting the old version and downloading the new version, which works beautifully. Naturally you will not be charged anything for downloading the book again. If you have not bought the book yet, then now is a good time to remedy your oversight.
We try to get everything right the first time, but when we hear something is wrong, we try to fix it. The error in this case was made by us, not Forward Chess. One of our QC people did the original ebook conversion, but it turns out he was not suited for the task (luckily he has great skills in other areas). The new version was converted by an FC expert, who has also converted our recent books, and will be doing our books in future, so the problem will not happen again.
Do you think less of Magnus Carlsen after his emotional outburst at the World Blitz Championship?
A few days ago I had a discussion with a friend on Skype about Carlsen’s swearing and throwing of a pen during the World Blitz Championship. The best way to bring my point across is to give a slightly edited version of the conversation. After this, vote on the poll please…
“Before I let you go. What is your opinion of Carlsen loudly exclaiming “baen” in the middle of the tournament hall after losing to Grischuk?”
“It is great. I think he said “faen”, which is short for “for fanden”, “done on behalf of the devil” or simply “the devil’s work”. It might be spelled differently in Norwegian, but essentially it is Danish.”
“But very vulgar, right? Google translate and chess.com mistranslated it to f***.”
“Not really no. In English it is “damn.” But either way: do you want the sexlessness of tennis players? Or Tiger Woods? They are like Ken; and the blonde tennis girls are like Barbie. They always talk so nicely about everything and everyone, while it is common knowledge they all hate each other. Because the sponsors want to avoid negative PR. F*** that!”
“Good point.”
“Give me a sport with some emotion please. I love Nakamura, because he is like John McEnroe, clearly a bit full of himself, but brings attention to the sport and cares deeply about it – and is fun to watch. His feuds with Carlsen are entertaining. And Carlsen’s feuds with Kramnik are entertaining. Kramnik and Carlsen get along fine, though they both enjoy some banter…”
It has been a couple of weeks since the World Cup finished in Baku, which also meant that we had reached the end of the road for our World Cup Quiz. Roughly 20 contestants made it through the initial qualifying questions, and there were several still on the same score by the time the semi-finals had finished. It transpired that nobody had guessed Karjakin or Svidler to win (thus landing a 3-pointer at the buzzer), so we contacted the highest scorers to make a further prediction on the final as a tiebreaker. When the dust settled on the rapid play matches we still had 2 contestants standing and, although probably not quite as exhausted as Svidler and Karjakin themselves, we decided that it would be unfair to find further ways to whittle it down to one winner.
Therefore I am happy to announce that the joint winners of our 2015 World Cup Quiz were Marija Čačić of Croatia and Lucas Van Foreest of the Netherlands. They have both kindly sent a picture of their prize… Read more…
Today is the third and final day of the World Rapid Championships, with the Blitz equivalent taking place on Tuesday and Wednesday and seemingly receiving an extra injection of players straight from the Isle of Man. Most of us can only dream of being in Berlin, but I’m sure we all enjoy the occasional blitz binge after (during!?) a hard day at work or university. So our poll question this week is where is your favourite site to play online?
Chess24, ICC, Chess.com, Playchess, Gameknot, Red Hot Pawn, A combination of the above, somewhere else, or do you prefer over the board blitz at your local club?
The results of last week’s poll placed Nigel Short as your favourite chess commentator, with Jan Gustafsson and Yasser Seirawan also highly popular. However, the large number of votes for ‘Other’ suggested we did not give you enough options! Comments showed Daniel King and Peter Svidler may have been amassing a large chunk of these votes, while there was also some interesting discussion on the best pairings to make up a commentary team.
We had four days of very interesting lectures from former challenger Nigel Short on attacking chess. It was simply exceptional. One participant described it as the most enjoyable 15 hours in his chess career. In one game Nigel showed us how he self-forked his pieces. It seems he was a bad influence on himself:
Alon Greenfeld – Nigel Short
Isle of Man 07.10.2015
“I won by forking my own pieces today? Even if nobody else benefited from my talks, I certainly have!” Nigel Short sent this message after his splendid lectures in Edinburgh Chess Club last week.
1.Nf3 d5 2.c4 d4 3.b4 Bg4 4.g3 f6 5.Bg2 e5 6.0–0 Nd7 7.Qb3 a5 8.e3 dxe3 9.fxe3 axb4 10.d4 Be6 11.Bb2 Nh6 12.dxe5 fxe5 13.Nbd2 Nf7
The opening had not gone very well for White, but after this Greenfeld finds a way back into the game.
We mentioned a few weeks ago that two Quality Chess books reached the shortlist of four for the ECF Book of the Year prize. Mauricio Flores Rios made the shortlist alongside Garry Kasparov and Joel Benjamin, but it was Boris Gelfand’s Positional Decision Making in Chess which won the prize. So congratulations to Boris and Jacob, commiserations to Mauricio.
The judges’ full comments can be read here but a few highlights were:
“A fascinating insight into how the chess mind of a great player works… Gelfand comes over as modest but confident in his abilities, with tremendous ability, experience and knowledge. But despite all this, even he sometimes finds chess a difficult game, which gives comfort to us all.”
This is the fourth Quality Chess winner of the ECF prize:
2007: San Luis 2005 – Gershon & Nor 2010: Attacking Manual 1&2 – Jacob Aagaard 2013: How I Beat Fischer’s Record – Judit Polgar 2015: Positional Decision Making in Chess – Boris Gelfand
Live tournament coverage has really taken off in the last few years, with all major tournaments now coming with a commentary team broadcasting alongside the action. The commentator’s job varies from explaining the player’s moves, to interviewing them post-game, to generally passing the time with anecdotes or question/answer sessions with viewers. So our poll question this week is who is your favourite commentator?
Nigel Short, Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam, Jan Gustafsson, Emil Sutovsky, Evgenij Miroshnichenko, Maurice Ashley, Jennifer Shahade, Yasser Seirawan, Simon Williams, Sergei Shipov or someone else?
Recently one of our employees fell out online with a chess writer for a competing chess publisher. The said writer fell for a hoax and our employee teased him a bit, while telling him. Said writer took offence. Things go wrong in written language all the time. No story.
The writer clearly had a bigger think and posted this comment on his thread:
One by one I have had to remove ‘Quality Chess’ people from my ‘friends’ list. I guess in a way it has been inevitable, every atom of my being is opposed to their approach to publishing and the marketing of highly sophisticated openings books. The ‘market’ is way too weak for these books but it’s easy to convince people that they need them.
I am all for good old-time mud-wrestling, but somehow it is less interesting to watch when it is performed by slightly bulky middle-aged men. So therefore I would prefer to turn it into a debate with our readers, you guys. Do you think that there is some truth in what this guy says? I will give my own view first.
Recent Comments