I’m writing this from Lund, in Sweden, where this evening I’ll be playing in the first Cellavision Chess Cup. The schedule is slightly strange, four rapid games this evening, followed by four standard games over the weekend. Apparently this is quite popular in Sweden and I’m looking forward to trying it. The list of players and hopefully pairings and results are here and the games should also be live, although I believe the guy in charge of the technical side is unwell so this might be erratic.
Whenever I finally get round to publishing something on the site I apologise for the huge delay since the last update. This time I appreciate it’s even longer than normal but all my time has been devoted to a project. I am pleased to announce that I have been writing about the Dragon Defence for Quality Chess’s Grandmaster Repertoire Series. I hoped, as I already had decent notes on the Dragon, that completing the book wouldn’t take long. However, once I start something, I tend to go into it very thoroughly, and I was forced to ask for a couple of extensions to my deadline.
Once the material was complete it was clear it was much too long for one book and so we’ve decided to publish it as two volumes. The first will cover 9.Bc4 and 9.g4 in the Yugoslav Attack, and the second 9.0-0-0 and the rest. I believe the plan is for the books to be released together on September 2nd and you can download excerpts here and here. UPDATE – The publication has been pushed back to September 9th due to a delay at the printers.
I’ve worked very hard on the books and hope that you enjoy them and that they stand up to the anticipated attempts at a refutation. I’ve tried to offer a few alternatives, primarily both the Topalov and Soltis Variations in the super sharp 9.Bc4 mainlines, while also offering a choice in the topical 9.0-0-0 lines. If you have any questions you can send me a message here and I’ll try and answer as soon as I get a spare moment. Time to return to playing and hopefully regain last year’s form!