The Classical Slav on Forward Chess – feedback and our reaction

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.

 

13 thoughts on “The Classical Slav on Forward Chess – feedback and our reaction”

  1. Awesome customer service! Thanks a lot!!
    The only unfixed issue I have found so far: the title still reads “… SLav” instead of “…Slav” after downloading. I think I can easily live with that 🙂

  2. We honestly did not see a choice. We had sold something to people that was not up to scratch. Not intentionally, as you can imagine. But anyway, it just had to be fixed.

  3. I should add that when Tobias told us about it, it was the first time we became aware that there was a problem. Otherwise we would have dealt with it sooner of course. So please ALWAYS TELL US IF SOMETHING WE ARE DOING IS NOT AS IT SHOULD BE. We try hard, but we are really just a bunch of average guys in an office, so we do get it wrong at times.

  4. I bought several QC e-books and i am enthusiastic about it, but is it possible to put page numbers on the pages? Especially in the kings indian books it is very hard to search the solutions in the excercise section.

  5. An Ordinary Chessplayer

    @John Shaw – In Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual (my only purchase on Forward Chess), the printed diagrams are hyperlinks. Clicking puts the same position on the dynamic board. So it seems the ideal puzzle would have a hyperlink to the solution, and then the solution (at the end perhaps) would have another hyperlink back to the “page” the puzzle was on. Then page numbers would not be needed.

  6. I own three quality chess titles on Forward Chess, and I intend to purchase more because I find them more convenient than printed books.
    Playing the French and The Catalan 1A are fine on FC but the transfer of Pump up your rating has not gone well. The content of the book is excellent, however there are many errors. For example in chapter 5 (The list of mistakes) none of the games after Smith-Zakhartsov display correctly on the board.

  7. Jacob, John et al

    I can see why books on players eg your ones on Tal and Karpov are ‘timeless’ and are still as relevant and worth the full price but opening books date quickly and the paper version soon loses its value as time marches on. I notice it is only the newest books available but are there any thoughts about discounting some of your older back catalogue on Forward chess? Though the original Avrukh GM 1 and 2 are a little dated they are still 95% relevant and I’d still be happy to buy the electronic version at a decent price just to avoid lugging around the doorstop sized physical copies and the ability to go through the variations on the interactive board

  8. This Forwardchess and similar chess apps are a great concept and lot more convenient than physical books. However I feel it is still in early stages and there is a room for more refinement.

    Just my two cents here from patzer level player.

    1) These are apps for tablets and smartphones, however there is no use iOS and android gestures. This will make it more convenient for reading. Only Stockfish app has this feature where you can move forward/backward with flick of one finger.

    2) There can be an option where the static diagram which hyperlinks to interactive can instead just switch between static/interactive. Could save some real estate space.

    3) When reading/playing out the game on an app, the most used feature must be the forward/backward arrows but in most chess apps they are too small in size and one has to keep hunting for it while reading the book. Even Chessbase iOS has this problem. Larger arrows would be welcome, though the gestures feature would solve that problem as well.

    Also would love to see Quality books in kindle though I have read on this blog that GM Aagard is not at all enthusiastic about this idea. I would suggest he should have a look at this “enhanced kindle” concept where there is an audio/video integration and most probably very tough to pirate these books.

    Many some chess publisher could work with this concept of Enhanced Kindle version which would have interactive chess diagrams/games. Something like a forward chess on kindle.

  9. Jacob Aagaard :
    I should add that when Tobias told us about it, it was the first time we became aware that there was a problem. Otherwise we would have dealt with it sooner of course. So please ALWAYS TELL US IF SOMETHING WE ARE DOING IS NOT AS IT SHOULD BE. We try hard, but we are really just a bunch of average guys in an office, so we do get it wrong at times.

    I seem to recall that there was a missing line added to Chapter 5 of the Forward Chess version of the Classical Slav–Line C4.3. This line is missing in the reconverted version. I noticed because I had printed out the update and put it with my printed book.

  10. @PatzerGuy I agree with point 3 strongly. The small size of the forwards/backwards arrows drives me crazy on a number of chess apps on both iOS and Android (even when using a 9 or 10 inch tablet). I like the ability in Android’s ChessPGN to tap on the left or right side of the board to navigate forwards of backwards in the move list.

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