Dear friends,
I started visiting chesspublishing.com about a year ago and "The Safest Sicilian" is strongly influenced by your comments on other books. As I point out in my foreword, readers often want opposite things. While it is impossible to please to all, I tried to listen to most of you. We started the Chess Stars opening series with the Classical (especially in the Soviet/Russian chess school) layout - like in the Opening for White according to Kramnik. The forum taught me that many of you like other formats too. So I decided to achieve a better readability and ease of use. Firstly I designed a new set of chess fonts - for the different levels of variations. I hope that now it is easier to navigate between main variations and sublevels. For the same reason I put extra space between the main lines and the commentaries. Secondly I put more diagrams (but smaller in order to accomodate them on a small page).
   "...some want heavy variations and analysis" - I can assure you that all the content is based on heavy original analysis right from Delchev's notebook. Every strong professional has his own theory and I've made a considerable effort to present the essence of it. You know that it is much more time consuming to write concisely, but meaningfully. Personally I have noticed that I never read the abundant commentaries of 1-2 famous GMs although I otherwise respect them much. Then why to bother you with lines that noone will remember or even read. There is more to it. Sometimes a concrete variation might turn incorrect, but time proves that the general assessment held true. It is up to magazines to digg into long variations. I believe that a book should give the essence.

Finally, you will judge the fate of this new format - by buying, or not buying, this book.

Well, Eric, the flaw you point out is a strongpoint in my eyes. The quick repertorie is manageable : I can browse through it, get the outline and start playing the opening. While playing some questions rise, which are neatly answered in the 'step by step' section. And for further investigation there are complete games.
It corresponds nicely to my 'approach'.

I agree that "reading and nodding" is bad, and I like opening books with plenty of explanation and illustrative games.  However, I feel that the "Quick Repertoire" section is just redundant; most of the material is repeated in the "Step by Step" section.  I guess I would have liked a format where you get the instruction/overview in the form of well annotated games and the theory in a tree format, similar to the Pinski/Aagaard book on the Kalashnikov.  Although that book has other problems, I liked the format a lot; it had a great introduction with well-annotated games in addition to the theory section.  In The Safest Sicilian, I feel that we get the worst of both worlds: the theory section is lighter than it could have been because there is less space, and the illustrative games have almost no annotations at all.   

Don't get me wrong; I like the book.  It's the first book out on "my" main defence to 1.e4 since Burgess' book and has some nice new ideas.  I just think it has a little too much fluff and a bad index.  I'm not trashing the book; I hope I'm offering constructive criticism that the authors will keep in mind for future projects.

I guess it boils down to this: buyers of opening books vary widely in strength; I can imagine anyone from about 1400 USCF all the way up to IM or maybe GM buying and using this book.  On top of that, people learn in different ways and expect different things from books; some want heavy variations and analysis like in John Watson's Play the French, and others want more explanation like in Neil McDonald's Mastering the French With the Read and Play Method.  It's difficult to cater to all readers.  I'm a big fan of both the books I mentioned above even though they have vastly different presentations.  I feel that The Safest Sicilian can't quite decide which type of book it wants to be and ends up a second rate "hodgepodge" of both types.

I like the quick repetoire approach because it allows the the following way to learn an opening:

1. Read JUST the quick repetoire
2. Start playing it now (just in offhand or internet games if you're worried about your rating) and record your games.
3. Only then come back to read the step by step section, and it will now mean more to you, and you can also consider why you chose the moves you did rather than the recommended ones to get some more insight.
4. Play some more!
5. Then play the full games and see how the plans the GMs played compared with your own ideas.

It's a different, more practical approach to learning an opening, and more fun IMO than churning through a big opening tome before you dare to try it, which I think leads to what Rowson calls "reading and nodding" rather than developing chess skill.

impressive win by Akopian:
"short and sweet"

[Event "Gibraltar Masters"]
[Site "Gibraltar"]
[Date "2006.01.24"]
[Round "6"]
[White "Akopian,Vladimir"]
[Black "Cramling,Pia"]
[Result "1-0"]
[Eco "B48"]
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nc6 5.Nc3 Qc7 6.Be3 a6 7.Qd2 Nf6 8.0-0-0 Bb4 
9.f3 Ne5 10.Nb3 b5 11.Kb1 Be7 12.Qf2 d6 13.g4 Nfd7 14.Rg1 Bb7 15.g5 0-0 16.f4 b4 
17.Na4 Nc4 18.Bxc4 Qxc4 19.f5 Qb5 20.f6 Qxa4 21.fxe7 Rfe8 22.Rxd6 Bxe4 23.Rg4 Bd5 24.Qe1 a5 
25.Bd4 Bxb3 26.axb3 Qb5 27.Rxd7 a4 28.bxa4 Qf5 29.Rg3 e5 30.Ra7 Rac8 31.Qxe5  1-0

Dear Mr Semkov,
I am fairly literate AND have a fine appreciation for good things, despite being an American.  I have purchased every single book that you've written/co-written for Chess Stars.  Thanks for such great opening guides! They are the crown jewels of my collection!   

                                                                                                                                         Regards, SC

P.S. I would love to see Chess Stars put out a book examining the Nimzo Qc2 or the QID g3!

Dear Semko,

I received my copy of this great and fascinating work last week and up to now only had the time to take a very brief look at it.

One thing stunned me:

In the position after 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.c3 Nf6 4.e5 Nd5 5.d4 cd 6.cd d6 you only cover 7.a3 and 7.Bc4, but what about 7.Nc3? It is played fairly often and right now I dont think it's worse than the above meontioned two mainlines. Or is there anything obvious I missed? 

I would suggest 7...Nxc3 8.bxc3 Qc7 9.Bd2 Nd7 followed by a setup with b6/Bb7 etc. My verdict is =, so I expected to find a hint about this variation in your book. But please, dont take this as criticism, its really just a question about this very outstanding book.

Kind regards,
Cresspahl