barnaby wrote on 01/17/15 at 03:13:18:
The book made me an offer I could not refuse. I am making the book my new wartime consigliere.
I see what you did there.
barnaby wrote on 01/17/15 at 03:13:18:
So I jumped right in and started playing some training games using just the shallow understanding I grabbed in a few hours of reading and found some great positions coming up on the board. Now making a more studious effort to learn and work through it and put Kalashnikov in repertoire for the upcoming US $$ tournaments that lead up to the World Open.
barnaby wrote on 01/17/15 at 03:13:18:
Its a real good book.
Thanks for your efforts.
I'm glad you like it - thanks for the support, and good luck in your tournaments! I was thinking about traveling to the World Open, just to check it out this year - maybe I'll see you there!
DenVerdsligeRejsende wrote on 01/17/15 at 05:20:53:
It is true, this book is quite unique that it has a broad range of audience, I am someone who only has goals of IM by norms and hopefully better even, and it has good coverage for this cause. Usually opening books are either little detailed for higher rated players, or too detailed for lower rated players, but this one seems to have good balance. Even in open tournaments, you know that you need at least 5,5/9 with a 2400 performance to get rewarded an IM norm, thus you need good materials to help you. I like to think about opening books in that category: which ones really help to achieve norms after study, and which not, and I find that this one falls into the first category.
Thanks! If I recall I said in the introduction that I tried to give stronger players a lot of detailed analysis (it's still possible to give too much - that's something that an author really needs to think about), and club players reasonable explanations. I think the intro and "key takeaways" help there. Club players can always just study the book less deeply than titled players, but if the detailed analysis is not there, stronger players will never use your book!