Quality Chess Newsletter – two new books and a new hardcover

Dear Quality Chess Reader,

We have recently published a couple of new books.

Mayhem in the Morra by Marc Esserman offers a lively anti-Sicilian repertoire with 2.d4 cxd4 3.c3. But that can’t be sound, can it? That was my view when Marc suggested we publish his book, but the enthusiastic American IM convinced me he had refuted all Black’s alleged refutations. The world’s leading Morra expert reveals all his secrets in a wild and funny style.

Playing 1.d4 – The Queen’s Gambit by Lars Schandorff is the first half of an ambitious two-volume repertoire for White with 1.d4. The core of the repertoire from the first edition, published in 2009, is retained, but a multitude of details have been updated and improved within the lines. To quote GM Boris Avrukh, “Lars, I want to play your book.”

Another new offering is an existing book in a different format. It is the long-awaited hardcover edition of Grandmaster Repertoire 3: The English Opening Volume 1 by Mihail Marin. For years various readers have complained to me that their bookshelf looks “all wrong” with a perfect row of hardcover GM Repertoires spoiled by the missing GM3. Now this flaw can be remedied. We have set the price at just the same as the paperback version.

The chess file (in pgn or pdf) mainly consists of games we annotated for the Greek Team Championship website. If you do not understand Greek, then that link may be less useful than our pgn and pdf files, which we have left in English.

Regards,
John Shaw
Chief Editor
Quality Chess

14 thoughts on “Quality Chess Newsletter – two new books and a new hardcover”

  1. Gilchrist is a Legend

    I received my copy of Playing the Queen’s Gambit today, and with a QC brochure. I have noticed that GM Repertoire French has two volumes now. I think the Winawer is in the Volume Two cover. Is it that the Winawer covers the entire 2nd Volume then? Any more news is there about the Winawer in the GM Repertoire French book regards to either 7…Qc7 or some other line that caused two volumes of French? 😀

  2. The fact that it’s 2 volumes is nothing new.

    Look at http://www.qualitychess.co.uk/ebooks/2012QC.pdf

    Lower left corner of the 2nd page, there is an image of 5 books, the 3rd and 4th both being the French. Been that way since the PDF came out around May or so. The other 3 in that image are 1.d4 sidelines, Classical Slav, and 1.e4 vs the Sicilian (The first of the 1.e4 books).

    Of course, some things have changed, like the Modern Benoni, and I’ve seen hints of the Open Spanish, so it probably could use an updating, but the fact that the French is 2 books is nothing new.

  3. Gilchrist is a Legend

    @Jacob Aagaard

    Interesting, two French QC books due to be published. What do you think is the best way to play the Winawer without playing the Poisoned Pawn line? I usually try to play either 6…Qa5 or 7…0-0 because I find the 7…Qc7 line to be as complicated at least as much as the Najdorf Poisoned Pawn line, a line where I have lost six times from six games (two Najdorf Poisoned Pawn games in the same tournament once!) against opposition between 2350-2500, usually in less than 30-35 moves, so I would rather play a calmer Winawer line :).

  4. Gilchrist is a Legend

    Also do you think that the McCutcheon Variation would be the most ambitious after 3…Nf6 4. Bg5 in comparison with 4…Be7 or 4…dxe4? I think Nikos said something about the McCutcheon being in the Playing the French book, but cannot remember completely.

  5. Jacob Aagaard

    @Gilchrist is a Legend
    We are analysing; we are committing ourselves only later on. We have some serious improvements on the existing books (at least half for White – the usual over-confidence issue) already, but want to look for more.

  6. Appreciate the more generous pricing on the Marin hardcover release, which I now proudly own.
    Any plans to offer special pricing on the other two volumes of Marin’s English in hardcover?
    Just wondering if you have a view on moving older titles more quickly by considering special offers?
    It’s wishful thinking on my part as I know that the books are well worth the money but I only own three QC books in hardcover as the cost is prohibitive for a casual player like myself – if you discounted them after they’d been out a couple of years and the initial sales had maybe slowed down I think you’d pick up plenty,ore sales from those of us who would like the hardcover but aren’t able to justify all titles in that format.
    Thanks for considering!

  7. Jacob Aagaard

    @Andy
    No changes in prices on existing books. We just knew that there were lots of guys out there who had bought the paperback and wanted the hadback to complete their collections. And we did not want to exploit this. Obviously we have extra costs by reprinting in hardback only, but we are sure that the double purchases will make up for this.

  8. I wish the french defence book of Jacob and Nikos would consider the burn variation against 3..Nf6 4.Bg5 set-up.As both Watson and Antic covered the McCutcheon.Just wishing.

  9. Gilchrist is a Legend

    @Jacob Aagaard

    Regarding publication of Schandorff’s Volume 2 Indian Defences repertoire for 1. d4, when do you think France should receive the book, for example the chess shop Variantes in Paris?

  10. On the Morra book, I notice one reviewer on amazon is pointing out a typo on p245 (e6 and b5 played twice). As I understand his review, he thinks this makes it impossible to follow the recommended line.

    Having looked myself (admittedly at a high level), the typo is there, but it is possible to follow the text. All in all, from the first 50 pages I’ve read so far, I think it is a great book.

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