Quality Chess Blog

Desperately busy with a quick non-QC project. Excerpts up in a few days; new PS as well. For now, this:

Chapter List

Part 1 – 1.d4 d5 lines

Chapter 1 – Miscellaneous (2.a3, 2.e3)
Chapter 2 – Blackmar-Diemer Gambit
Chapter 3 – 2.Bg5
Chapter 4 – Veresov
Chapter 5 – London 1.d4 d5 2.Bf4
Chapter 6 – 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.c3 (and rare moves)
Chapter 7 – 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Bg5

Part 2 – 1.d4 Nf6

Chapter 8 – 2.g3 and others
Chapter 9 – Trompowsky – Intro and 3.h4
Chapter 10 – Trompowsky – 3.Bh4
Chapter 11 – Trompowsky – 3.Bf4

Part 3 – 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6

Chapter 12 – side lines 3.Nc3, 3.Nbd2
Chapter 13 – 3.g3 d5 4.Bg2 b5
Chapter 14 – 3.Bg5 Torre Attack
Chapter 15 – London 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6 3.Bf4 d5
Chapter 16 – Colle
Chapter 17 – Colle-Zukertort (with c2-c4)
Chapter 18 – Colle-Zukertort (without c2-c4)

Part 4 – 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 g6

Chapter 19 – Other third moves
Chapter 20 – Barry 3.Nc3
Chapter 21 – 3.e3
Chapter 22 – London 3.Bf4
Chapter 23 – Torre 3.Bg5
Chapter 24 – 3.g3 (without c2-c4)

Knowing how journalists rewrite us, the answers below are probably more or less what Nikos said 🙂

5 questions

To

Nikos Ntirlis (“Reporter”, 29/9/2012)

Famous…away from home

He has got an enquiring mind and that’s why from a little kid he studied a lot of things, like astronomy. He also got involved with sports and especially martial arts where he got 2 Black belts. Today, Chess is his primary pursuit. He has got the title of “FIDE Trainer”. We are talking about the 28 year old from Patras, Nikos Ntirlis, the coach of Danish National Team…

How did you start working on chess?

N.N: When I was 17 years old, a big age for someone that wants to become good at international level. My first teacher, Nikos Karapanos, said to me that someday I’d become a good player, but not a great one, but if I was determined enough and worked hard I’d become a great chess coach! My teacher sadly passed away in August 2009, at the age of 42. In his memory I wrote my first chess book that was published in English.

How come an English-speaking publication house got interested for your work?

N.N: In Greece, today especially due to the financial crisis, it is next to impossible to publish a chess book if you don’t posses in your own the money for it and you don’t have the necessary support. Abroad, those things don’t count. What really counts is the quality of your work. The best world-wide publication house dedicated on chess decided to publish a book with my name on it, in their most prestigious series, the Grandmaster Repertoire series, where only famous authors sign the books. At the beginning I couldn’t believe it (and still, sometimes it seems that everything is a dream), but the book got published, it sells relatively well, the reviews are good (it was even voted for the second best book of the year) and the publishers are pleased with it. I don’t need more than that to be happy.

How did the work for the Danish Federation happen?

N.N: As a trainer I work mainly today with students abroad. Some of them are very successful players in their countries and this is always a good referral for a trainer. In August 2011 the European Team Championships took place in Halkidiki and this is when I was first approached to work for the Danish Team. After the event they went pleased with our co-operation, so I got a proposal for working again for them in the Chess Olympiad at Istanbul this year, 27 August to 10 of September. The Chess Olympiad is the biggest and most important tournament in chess.

And how did the team perform?

N.N: Among 158 countries, we ended up 18nth which seems to be the second best placement of the Danish team in their history (they were 9nth at 1978 but before the Soviet Union and the Yugoslavia destruction produced so many new countries) and we left behind teams with great tradition in chess like Israel, India and also Greece who has done well in the last times.

What are you future plans?

N.N: I’d like more people to know about chess and especially young kids to get involved with it because chess offers so many tools to use them later in their lives.

People love the McCutchian it seems. I better look up how it is spelled!

I will get a few nice photos up from my retirement lecture and simul. It was a nice quiet event at my local chess club with a few friends. I won all the games, some of them against 2100’s. I had a nice finish against a team mate, that was more or less like this (sorry, a few pieces are fuzzy in my mind!):

1.Qe6 Rd7 2.Qxf7+ 1-0

I do know that 1.Ne6+ was stronger objectively, but I quite like it the way it came :-).

Over the next week we will be lucky enough to be visited online by a world class player. Judit Polgar will visit the blog occasionally to answer questions posed by readers in the comments to this post. This is your chance to pick the brain of a chess superstar.

Judit’s new book How I Beat Fischer’s Record  is published today.

Dear Quality Chess reader,

Judit Polgar’s How I Beat Fischer’s Record is published today and we are very excited about it. The greatest ever woman player explains how she became a grandmaster at a younger age than Bobby Fischer. This is the first of three volumes, all of  which will be hardcovers at our normal paperback price.

Next week (24-28 September) Judit will be available at the Quality Chess blog to answer readers’ questions. This is a rare opportunity to pick  the brain of a world class chess player. Post your questions in the comments of the relevant blog page and, if you’re lucky, Judit will answer – obviously we cannot  guarantee Judit will answer every question.

Our chess file (in pgn or pdf) contains some games and puzzles based on the efforts of the Quality Chess team at the recent Istanbul Olympiad.

Regards,

John Shaw

Chief Editor

Quality Chess

Nikos and I have already discussed our lines after 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nd2 for Playing the French, but as he has analysed everything with usual tenacity, it was quite interesting for us to see what the public thought. Especially as 3…Be7 is the current trend in repertoire books (and Emanuel is working on 3…Nf6) and we were heading more for 3…c5 in general.

We are still analysing, so we take everything on board, although we have some ideas. I am uncertain about 3…Be7, especially as when we looked at the recommendation in THE MODERN FRENCH it was straight to +- for White when we compared our recommendation for John’s 1.e4 books (which are a team effort as always, when John’s name is on the cover – but remember that John is the brutal dictator of Quality Chess, who has chosen to do the King’s Gambit alone!). All you had to do was one logical move (top 3 in all 1.e4-players’ candidates for sure) and tap the spacebar every 30 seconds. TMF seems a bit shaky at places, but is still a very interesting book that deservedly has received rage review.

For most playing the Olympiad, this was a disaster of a tournament. Bad food, bad internet, ok hotels, RUBBISH location, decent playing conditions, inexperienced arbiters (who did not understand the three time repetition rule before move 30) and a general low-cost attitude to everything.

The internet coverage was probably not bad besides a glitch in round 1.

2014 and 2016 are both likely to be top-class events. Sadly I am now retired, but John, Colin and Andrew are all possible on the Scottish team by then! Maybe Cathy will play for the Scottish ladies team?!