I am just about to go out the door to something as rare in my life as three days of holiday. I will obviously be online and workning while away, but still…
Quality Chess has joined forces with Anuk.doo (mainly Arkadij Naiditsch) to produce the periodical Chess Evolution. The first issue, September 2011, will be available in a week or so and is now available in our webshop. Soon we will also have subscription options. Hopefully I will be able to set them up while I am away, but if not, I will set them up at the end of next week.
We also have our own Chess Evolution series, and volume 1 will be finished from the printer at the end of next week. The same is the case for Black Gambits 1. Both books will be shipping from the 30th of September it looks like. We will send CE Sep a bit earlier to webshop customers, but probably not to shops. However, it will be in your local shop at the beginning of October. And if it is not – ask them to order it!
How many games will be in CE from September
I read somewhere that Arkady N. was not so hapy with less games in CE because of some other items in it.
Thats very interesting news. I byed the first three volumes , and the content was very good, up to date coverage, . Only some minor stuff (sometimes strange english even for a not native speaker and poor lyaout) to criticize, but shure it will become even better !!
I just ordered all the back issues and subscribed a few days ago through chess-evolution.com. Will they still be handling my subscription or will it pass over to Quality Chess?
Will you be taking over the printing and improving the layout and the English which is sometimes worse than Chess Stars?
I can answer a few of these questions.
Chess Evolution September will be 50 games, plus an endgame article and a puzzle section. Many of the games are analysed in great depth. Since most of the analysts are well over 2600, not surprisingly, the chess looks very good.
The basic plan is the original Chess Evolution team provide the chess analysis, and then Quality Chess fixes the language, improves the layout, and does all the other things to make the book look good. So there will be no more problems with the English (other than the occasional errors that native speakers make anyway!).
We also handle the distribution. Basically, we offer all the things where CE could be better – and hopefully it will be very good for both parties. We do indeed also handle the subscriptions, and it does not matter if you buy them on their site or ours (once we put the subscriptions up). I have sent an excerpt to Jesse and if he has not already put it up, I am sure he will do so soon.
Chess Evolution September 4/2011 pdf excerpt
http://www.qualitychess.co.uk/ebooks/ChessEvolution2011-4-September-Promotional.pdf
It’s welcomed to see that a major and Number 1 Chess Publisher like Quality Chess makes a joint venture with Chess Evolution team.
I must say that I see a Chess Evolution concept like a similar thing with Chess Informant Yearbook, and besides the oroginal publisher is also from (ANUK.doo BEOGRAD, Knez Mihajlova 20/13, Serbia). One might even think that some rebels from Informator decided to make their own Yearbook!
Well I hope that the competition these days shall be to our benefit: just pit them all together – New in Chess Yearbook vs Chess Informant vs Chess Evolution 🙂
While the latest issue of Chess Evolution deals with only 50 games I hope that the games were picked according to criteria like: best game, novelty, importance etc. Also the currentness is your greatest skill! Who wants to analyse games from last autumn in our days of brutal flow of informations when we can follow live analysis for example from World Cup. Because of that you made the right point. What I like the most are verbal commentaries, and for that I’m hopefully grateful to Jacob, am I not Jacob?
My suggestion is that you insert as much verbal commnetary as possible, and besides boring tactics/puzzle section like every chess magazine has on earth, please put excercises in strategic and positional play. This is the thing nobody does cause it’s much more complex and requiers much more investigation and work.
Finaly even I have a NOVELTY! (N!!) for you Jacob. At the and of every issue you could disect an opening repertoire of some elite player, what would be valuable for us, chess amateurs. After careful examination of all lines for Black and White in ECO codes, you can add which literature to follow and so on. This would be interesting…
Hi Jacob, I was wondering what your opinion is about why there are no real opening books on the QGD 5.Bf4 for white, seeing as it is so popular at the highest levels, I found one book from 2003, that was it.
Thanks
Correction, QGD 5.Bf4! Crouch 1998 not 2003.
@Michael
Maybe because it is a bit dour?! We hope to have a QGD book for Black, and Cox recently published one on this opening too. There it is featured. There are some games with 5.Bf4 in the September issue of Chess Evolution as well.
Thanks
Who is afraid to comment my post 🙂
Ok, need some clarification.
It talks above in the original post, and the messages, that Chess Evolution will be in local shops by early October, and if not, have them order it. Does this mean local online shops (i.e. Chess Cafe), or local walk-in book shops in Europe?
You mention about starting subscriptions. Will this be like their site, where it’s get March/May/July, or Sep/Nov/Jan? Or will it be more like informant where a subscription can start at any issue? In other words, their subscriptions can be 110 to 112, 111 to 113, 112 to 114, etc.
I ask this because my initial intention was to buy September as a single volume. See what I think of the analysis. If it keeps my interest, subscribe thereafter. Will it be possible to start a subscription with November? Or will it be like the CE site where if you don’t do Sep/Nov/Jan, then your next opportunity at a subscription will be Mar/May/Jul (or so it seems)?
Also, if I’m looking to get that September volume as a single volume, do I need to order it here, or did “local shops” imply they can be purchased from a place in the United States? I assume subscriptions will be dealt with exclusively here and CE site?
Maybe because the theory on Bf4 is very heavily played out in the main lines with …c5 and Nbd7 is getting there too so nobody wants to write it?
If you want to spice it up, you can try 1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. Nc3 Be7 5. Bf4 O-O 6. e3 b6!?
Hi. What’s the level the “Advanced Chess Tactics” aimed at? Is it comparable to Dvoretsky books? Thanks.
Since QC are located in Glasgow (UK), I assume local shops means London Chess Centre (London) and Chess Direct (South Yorkshire). I doubt Jacob would refer to local as in the USA 🙂
But local bookstores such as Waterstones I have not seen many chess books unfortunately. I have not seen any QC books any time I went there either…
@Alekhine Power
Not afraid to comment, but as it was not a question, and as I am not going to promise to do everything you ask, I just read those posts and am influenced for the long term :-).
@Patrick
We will have subscription that can start at any point. When I talk about shops getting our books, I talk about the shops that usually have our books. Some shops don’t think our books are worth stocking, which I really don’t understand, but there you go. I cannot guarantee this, but I would suspect that some shops will offer their own subscription service of Chess Evolution. And if they don’t, maybe you can ask them :-).
@Daniel Clancy
Actually the new trend is 6.a3!?, because after 6.e3 Nbd7 no one knows a path to an advantage.
@Gilchrist is a Legend
It includes ChessCafe, Chess4Less, USCF Chess Sales and maybe even Books from Europe, as well as shops all over Europe, and sometimes even in Australia/New Zealand.
Actually, recently we had a guy that bought 9 books from South Korea on our site. Because the order was of this size, we were able to send the books with FedEx and he had them faster than if someone in Germany had ordered 1 book, which we would have to send by post…
Hi Barry,
Advanced Chess Tactics is at a more advanced level than our Weteschnik books, (Understanding Chess Tactics and its coming 2nd edition, Chess Tactics from Scratch), but will not be directly comparable to Dvoretsky books. Dvoretsky is of course brilliant, but parts of his books will be too difficult for many players. Advanced Chess Tactics is intended to be more accessible.
Any idea when you guys can put up a new publishing schedule? It has been almost 3 months now!
Will there be a revised edition for GM-1 (with the new paper)? Any new GM-rep books in the works after GM-10? French, QGD, NID have been talked about in the comment section of this blog and Jacob indicated that QC is very interested but has not found the right writers for the projects.
I will endeavour to put one up today 🙂
The only GM Repertoire we are planning to do a second edition of is GM6, the Sicilian. Basically it is sold out and we want to publish a version without missing lines – and some lines have developed a lot in recent times.
We are in touch with writers for all three of those openings, but I am progressively pessimistic as you mention your list. We have such projects and communications with authors, but which ones will happen, I will not speculate about further.
Publishing schedule up tomorrow morning. I have the dates and so on sorted, but needs to go home now :-).
Actually Jacob is not well informed on this. After 6.a3 Nbd7! also leads to no advantage for White. Obviously if 7.e3 we transpose to the 6.e3 line and if 7.Nb5 i published my “refutation” of White’s idea in the chesspub forum some time back. Later i discovered that a particular national team discovered the same idea with me during their preparation for the latest chess Olympiad. When i showed to their second board that i had published that idea for free before they discovered it they were amazed and started studying the foroum!
For those interested, my idea was that after 7.Nb5 Ne8 8.e3 a6 9.Nc3 Black plays 9…dxc4 (i hope that i haven’t messed up the move order!) followed by …b5+c5. Cox also missed that proposing 7…b6 in his book which leads to a very slight edge for White.
I expressed that in the wrong way. Jacob is well informed that 6.a3 is the new trend but he is probably not informed (at least he is not from me!) that this is nothing serious after all 🙂
I was wondering what happened to GM10–is it at the printer yet? 🙂
Don’t take this the wrong way but how do you get all this missing lines from a chess publishing company that calls themselves “Quality Chess” and says they have better editing than Everyman.
@M.A.S.
Hehe. Yes, I am not flawless. However, now you have been exposed to the confidence I have to modify (I have found a refutation to the Alekhine, Scandivanian – and so on). Chess theory moves forward, and yesterdays refutation is in tomorrows bin…
@Gilchrist is a Legend
I guess 8-10 working days.
@ Jacob
8-10 days at the printer or in the book shops?
In the new shedule it is oct/nov, unfortunatly….
First off, before I make my rant, keep up the good work Quality Chess, editors included!
And you make fun of Quality Chess’s editing skills? “how do you get all this missing lines from a chess publishing company”
1) Quality Chess doesn’t “get lines”, they publish analysis.
2) “this missing lines” – uhm, hello? plural. “these”, not “this”, which is followed by a singluar noun, and you make fun of Quality Chess’s editing skills? That right there gets a COME ON, MAN!
I’m sure there are other errors in their books, but amongst the Quality Chess books that I own thus far:
“The Berlin Wall”, “Play the Semi-Slav”, “Experts vs the Sicilian”, “Experts on the Anti-Sicilian”, “Practical Chess Defense”, “Cutting Edge 2: Sicilian Najdorf 6.Be3”, “Play the Scandinavian”, and Grandmaster Repertoires 1 thru 6
I’ve discovered one error, and it was a diagram in “Experts on the Anti-Sicilian”, and the fact that I don’t recall the page number or chapter it was in ought to imply I have read a lot of pages published by this company.
I’ve seen a significantly better error to page count ratio here than Everyman.
Quit knocking on Quality Chess. Every time I see your name on these posts, M.A.S., it’s always followed by complaints.
Quality Chess beats Everyman Chess in many ways:
1) Books published 2009 onward are available in hardcover
2) The editing is better – significantly better error to page ratio
3) The analysis is deeper in at least 90% of the cases. Everyman has a FEW books that compare to Quality Chess. One example is Vigorito’s 2 books on the King’s Indian, but these are the exception, not the rule. You ever look at “Starting Out: The French”? Pure garbage!
4) Quality Chess keeps their message boards clean. Everyman was corroded with Blackberry and portable phone advertisements, and people that complained about them not keeping up with their forums were blocked instead of the advertisers. Also, just to give you an idea how easy it was, all I had to do was re-register with a different handle. So their security level was useless. Needless to say, they ended up shutting down the forum because it was so bad, and here this one is still up and running, and John Shaw tends to eliminate the junk.
M.A.S., until you have something good to say, or a legitimate question about upcoming publications, delivery process, subscriptions, or CONSTRUCTIVE (NOT DESTRUCTIVE) Criticism, keep it to yourself!
@boki
Yes, two weeks to the printer…
Patrick, I think you missed a perfectly good natured joke. I was once cyberstalked and quite good at standing up for myself, I think. This time I thought M.A.S. was just teasing, and this is no problem at all.
Also, if anyone have problems with our books, please do give the negative remarks here too. If someone have problems with me, seek me out personally, although preferably not in a dark alley at night time…
Thats a pity a new GM-1 edition would have been great given all the fantastic high level game that have been played in Catalan in the past 3 years. I still hope we will get a new edition even if it does not happen in the near term.
I am surprised to hear that French has the best chances. If I had to guess I would say QGD Ragozin would be the one with most chances: fashionable with no literature means that there is a great deal of demand for it (same kind of environment for Gruenfeld before Avrukh’s magnum opus came out). But for French there you would face a fierce competition from Vituigov & Moskalenko plus the 4th edition of Watson’s play the French is supposed to come out sometime soon.
I do think Quality Chess is the best Chess book publisher but it just really annoys me that some people seem to think Quality Chess is perfect
Isn’t it a bit confusing to have 2 unrelated product series named “Chess Evolution”?
Hi Andre,
Yes, it is not ideal, but since the two series are on such different topics we hope it will not be too confusing. Having the same names was not planned – I believe we got there first with our Yusupov series and then the creators of the other series apparently independently came up with the same title.
@Hesam
It is about what people are wanting to write more than anything. We want them all…
@M.A.S.
I hope you don’t think we consider ourselves perfect. We don’t – not even close. Actually we would like to become much better at what we do. We are still learning on most days.
Other companies would have sent them a C&D. 😉
Maybe you should start refering to the 3 book series as “Arthur Yusupov’s Chess Evolution” and the ongoing theory thing as “Chess Evolution”. Not particularly elegant, but at least some sort of separation between the two.
Can you please make a chessbase dvd on the modern benonni please i dare you i ve watcxhed all your dvd and enjoyed ur hillarity my rating is of 2100 and i would like to know womething about this opening from a black point of view ty – Jacob (Oogoo
@Manailoiu,Dragos
I am sorry, this is not going to happen :-). I actually was the real author behind Starting Out: The Modern Benoni, where I helped out Vegh, when he did got stuck. If you like the humour, you should go find the recordings of the Glasgow 3rd Floor sessions at the Playchess server. John and I did a radioshow for a while. Who knows, maybe one day we will ressurrect it!?