Starting Out 1 d4 is not in my view a database dump, far from it. I like it because it identifies some very key lines.  It would not surprise me if it took longer than 200 hours to write and that Starting Out d4 took longer because of the sheer breadth of the material.

I suspect Starting Out Sveshnikov would take longer as well- a lot of material to process.

What format are you thinking about for the Berlin Wall book? One format I like (speaking generally) was Well's book on the Tromp- using illustrative games with detailed notes and giving a choice of aggressive or positional lines. May not fit the Berlin though. The positions in that opening can also be optically messy and not easy to assess. Generally I like the illustrative games approach because you can see how top players approach the middlegames that result from the opening but there can be real "gaps" in the analysis.

I am guessing but I suspect Keano's suggestion of the tree of variations approach involves a lot of work on the part of a writer but it has real advantages (hopefully less gaps and more systematic presentation).

We know that Donner thought Velimirovic was a small, ferret-like, person, of course. But apart from that not much.

I’d love to write about some of these more obscure figures but I’m not sure the publisher would stand for it – marketing and so on.

It’s certainly going to take over a hundred hours to write a decent openings book, yes. Of course it depends on many things. Joe Gallagher told me that Starting Out King’s Indian took him a fortnight, and when I expressed surprise he pretended to think I was surprised it had taken so long, and started making excuses about how he had his children to look after two days a week. But that’s a very good book indeed for what it’s trying to do. Of course Joe is very familiar with the material.

As a guide, I’d say 200 hours to do a Starting Out guide. Starting Out d4 probably took rather longer because there’s a wider range of material to choose what to present from than with just one opening. That’s to do the raw games and text; all the inserting diagrams, laying out, editing and so on is done by other people. Whether that produces something worthwhile rather than a database dump you’ll have to judge!

Keres in his younger days is another possibility and I am not sure many of his early games would be familiar to readers. Of course there are a number of books that are readily available covering his career.

Morozevich is of course a very enterprising player who can play slightly offbeat openings. I was interested in John's comments about him in Starting Out d4 which I have just acquired from Amazon.com. Is he really regarded as one of the best middlegame players around but perhaps slightly handicapped by offbeat openings?

I enjoy chess books and while opening books will always be of interest, collections of games based on themes (in this case gambiteers) sounds like a worthwhile concept. My preference is for less but well annotated games. I notice Timman is doing something not that dissimilar with his book on attack and earlier books on Bv N.

Which leaves one question, how long does it actually take to write an opening book assuming one is looking to write something worthwhile rather than a database dump? Obviously it will differ per writer and per book but is it true it can take hundred plus hours even with the benefits of chessbase and the internet.

Mike T; true but Everyman have just done a stand-alone book on him.

Vitolinsh - true; bit of a minor figure of course, but still. There's a good chapter about him in one of Sosonko's books. He committed suicide by jumping off a bridge on to a frozen river, I think. Impressive really - you couldn't do that these days what with global warming.

IMJohnCox wrote on 11/10/06 at 21:21:38:


Perhaps Alvis Vitolinsh could qualify? I don't know too much about him, except that he played the Cochrane gambit as a matter of honour and his name always kept coming up in the sharp sidelines in my old theory books  - besides, he has his own gambit in the Nimzo Indian... 

John & Edward

What are your next book projects. John I know you are writing on the Sveshnikov. What other books are lined up. Dragon 2 Eddy?

My grandfather was a painter and decorator, Eddie. When he died he left me his trousers to wear at chess tournaments.