Scottish GM Colin McNab won the recent Coulsdon GM tournament. His unbeaten score of 9/13 put him a point clear of his nearest rivals. Colin McNab is one of our regular proofreaders at Quality Chess, so we congratulate Colin while making the dubious claim that reading our books is entirely responsible for his success.
John Shaw
The best advice for all players on the question how to improve overall play is to STUDY GAMES AND CLASSICS!
Such statements can be found from Kasparov to Dvoretsky.
Becuase of that I propose a new series of books which tackle one of the main openings like Ruy Lopez or King’s Indian in following way:
a) analysis of for example 100 games in cronological order disecting main ideas, historical evolution etc
b) overview of strategy and endgame
Such work was done by Marin in his books “Beating the Open Games” and “Spanish repertoire” but only in introductory texts.
Accordingly I can not find any book which would analyse major opening line through complete games and that is very disapointingand annoying.
So it’s nothing new that we today have really really dum titled players who are “walking opening trees” but who also know nothing about general chess. Compare them with Kasparov and other top players and you’ll see where the difference is!
Jacob you can change this, can’t you?
Let Marin write such books and this can be a bestselling series named for example “Selected/Elite Games: Ruy Lopez…King’s Indian Defence…Queens’s Gambit…Slav etc.”.
Please thing seriously about my suggestion and don’t be a parrot in chess publishing, on the contrary, be a TRENDSETTER!!!
PS Many people pay coaches to anaylise for them games from bases and reveal secrets from bare score sheets, why can’t you do this with a one single pen move!!!
I am not sure this is my project, but thank you for the confidence :-).
When the blog was created there was a statement that the main purpose of the blog will be giving suggestions and opinions, critics aswell.
But lately I see just comments like Aagaard’s above, even when the poster spent much time and effort to elaborate his thoughts.
Disapointing!
On the other hand I saw that German chess store Niggemann anounced King’s Gambit for July 2009.
Any news about it and why is not here announced by the publisher? And what about cover photo?
Mr Lugovoi,
We are particularly busy at the moment finishing a number of books, so our blog may not yet be all we want it to be. I hope that a couple of weeks from now (when I finish the book I am editing) I will have more time and energy for the blog.
A couple of weeks back I did post a possible improvement on a recent GM Slav game, but no response: perhaps putting it as a comment on the Opening Books in Action thread make it less obvious.
King’s Gambit: mainly still to be written (by me) but it will be in the next few months. We like to be careful with announcing publication dates, so that if we announce it, our customers can trust it will appear then. Tricky, when it still had to be written.
The cover photo? The cover will be in our usual opening book style.
I was just typing up a question about whether the KG book was still in the works (Amazon just sent me a notification that the book by PINSKI was not available and so my order was cancelled). However I see you’ve already answered my question. Ah well, great. I’m looking forward to it. I’m enjoying quality chess books (damn near all of them) very much.
The fact that we have a blog to communicate with our readers, does not mean that we have to write very long paragraphs every time someone suggest us to do a book. Also, the suggestion was for me personally to write the book, which is not going to happen. I have to finish AM2 and do the 1.e4 series, and I don’t want to plan my life more than a year and four books ahead.
I have to say that I also found the comment: “Don’t be a parrot in chess publishing, on the contrary, be a TRENDSETTER!!!” a bit out of order and decided just to ignore the whole thing. How can you possibly call us parrots?
You can decide that this is disappointing if you like. We seriously consider every entry on the blog, but we don’t necessarily want to spend time coming with long answers.
When I wrote “Don’t be a parrot in chess publishing, on the contrary, be a TRENDSETTER!!!” I wanted to give my personal opinion in today’s state of “art” in chess publishing which evolved around:
a) beginner and intermediate chess series: Build up your Chess…, Starting out…, Chess Explained…, Easy Guide…
b) low level books: 1200-2000 Elo mostly!
So a term “parrot” reflects all publishers, but you also improved in some fields, so you’re steadily grown as a trendsetter.
When I address Mr. Aagaard I address you Jacob as a head of publishing house who finds authors or writes by yourself. So I thought your publishing house can give birth to my suggestions:)
With my comments which should be interpreted in bona fidae (I have most of your books, looking forward to new stuff), I propose also some interesting (for me:)) projects:
1. HISTORY/PLAYERS/GAMES
A) The Soviet Chess Power – King’s Indian Defence
– historical overview
– articles of famous players about KID
– evolution of the KID
– strategy-tactics-endgame
– classical games
B) Disciples of da Ruy Lopez sect
– historical overview
– articles of famous players about Ruy Lopez
– evolution of the Ruy Lopez
– strategy-tactics-endgame
– classical games
2. STRATEGY
A) Manual of Chess Strategy
– Soviet school disected
– positional assessment
– collection of the best masterpieces according to themes
3. ENDGAME
A) Rook endings
– new manual on the shoulders of Smyslov and Averbakh
Thanks for reply.
Congratulations to GM McNab! IM Cox did also well.
If I may ask, why did GM Aagard volunteer to write “A GM’s Repertoire 1. e4” ? Was there no author GM interested (GM Kotronias and others) or was it a particular project Mr Aagard wanted to undertake ?
Thank you.
I think it is a very interesting project. I wanted it. Kotronias is working on something else at the moment, actually.
To Abromov I would say that those books have been done so many times. Maybe we will do something along those lines in an inspired future, but at the moment we are looking at some other projects that we find more original and interesting.
Thanks for the answers, I will be sure not to miss the short-coming Sicilian book and the later 1. e4 volumes.
Thx for creating this forum and for entertaining your readers ideas. Quality chess is awesome, and I am looking forward to AM 2.
I was thinking I would like a book that focuses on middle game plans with certain openings or pawn structures. Such as the french, for example. I know there is a book by Neil McDonald on this topic, but it covers a little of everything, and doesnt really focus on one topic. I am lowly class player 🙂 hoping to expand my knowledge of middlegames, and plans in some of the opening systems I play frequently including the french. Thx for all the great books GM Aagard. I am working on AM 1 currently. The content is great. It is also cool because there is tons of material about the sicilian which is pretty applicable to the games I play.