Willempie wrote on 01/29/09 at 14:21:17:


Aw, give the guy a break.  I'm happy I learned this.  I don't know how much of this repertoire I'll want to play, but as a keen student of this defense, I await this book with great interest.  

I speculate that 4...dxe5 and 5...c6 is what he recommends against the Modern.  I have little taste for that, but maybe my taste will change. 

But the blurb has some really funny lines in it:

1.  "The Alekhine is a favourite among creative players such as Nigel Short, Vassily Ivanchuk and Hikaru Nakamura."  Can it really be said that the Alekhine is a favorite of anyone besides Baburin?  "Sometimes played by" is about the most you can honestly say about the degree of any other GM's attachment to it, unless I'm mistaken.

2.  "...a practical repertoire for Black, ideal for the modern-day player."  Oh, really?  Ideal for masochists, ideologues who care more about the tenets of Hypermodernism than about their chess results, and latter-day worshipers* of Steinitz, I will concede.

3.  "Black attacks from the very beginning."  Give me a break!  "Black from the very first creates the possibility of a favorable ending, and spends the next 25 moves trying to weasel into it" is more like it.  

4.  "This book provides everything you need to know to play the Alekhine with confidence."  Well that'll be a first, at least for me -- and I play this all the time.  I doubt that even Baburin plays this defense with confidence. 

* Standard American spelling, not that I knew it when I wrote this post. 

Are you going to advertise every new book?
In particular since this will be out in januari 2010 if not delayerd and if at all.