Congratulations to Burgess for third. Emerging from the thicket is a testament to writing a pretty good book.

Congratulations, of course, to Shaw and the Playing the French authors.

So, it is John Shaw indeed! Second time i participated in this poll and second time i came up second. In another poll about the Kaissiber competition i was second as well, so i start feelling like Keres!

Or, after a second thought, isn't Mr Buecker right after all and Shaw's book should be banned? Is "Playing the French" after all the real winner? 

I didn't come up with the example of IM Pert. I only countered it by stating this is not a discussion so a 2 way traffic of exchanging thoughts while keeping respect for each other.

The second example is indeed much better and both sides are respectful to each other except for 1 moment which i indicate. Arne is smart not to react on it but it doesn't mean that it is ok.

Some people here are advising Stefan to go to QC forum and there start to write all his complaints. I warn him that this could be a wrong decision based on my own experiences.

About having something personal against QC, I answer with the intro of my last article: "Quality chess has regularly nice blogarticles to create traffic to the site, advertise their products and naturally eventually to sell more. They don't avoid on purpose controversial subjects." http://chess-brabo.blogspot.be/2014/02/old-wine-in-new-skins.html
I would even believe i am advertising for QC instead of attacking no? In fact much of what i state is neither black or white. It just takes time to understand my views but very few do.

So Brabo, at first you say that QC doesn't like to discuss things online. Then someone proves you wrong and then you say that they do but they are not doing it well quoting a post from the author himself (IM Pert) and not the publisher (but it is again the publisher's fault, right?) without even trying to see the author's point, and in top of that you are judging the intentions behind the second post being "better" because chessvibes/chess.com is a big player! What can i say about that! Really i cannot.

I will only reffer you to the discussions of Mr Moll's review by the readers of these sites where there is some severe critique against it while at the QC blog Moll himself wrote "Hi Jacob & Nikos, It’s great to see your reactions to be honest, this is something most authors wouldn’t be capable of after a critical review". But again, it is a nice thing to quote only something small in order to try to prove a false point and not only that, but at the same time judge people's  intentions. I really cannot follow this logic. Don't you see that it has gone far from being an objective opinion to something personal against QC?

So, when someone reacts badly in a critique it is a disadvantage, while when he reacts well it is a disadvantage as well. On the other hand if he doesn't react at all then again it is a bad thing because he cannot stand to be judged?

To me it is obvious that QC will answer at some point (as they always do) but they have chosen to do so after the competition is over. 

dfan wrote on 02/27/14 at 16:50:32:

The examples you give are not really very favorable for QC.
I quote:
"Unfortunately there will always be people who like to criticize, and this time it’s the turn of Mr Martin Rieger. I don’t know who Mr Rieger is; I’ve never heard of him before, but since he has criticized my work I am keen to respond." That doesn't sound to me that one is open to discuss publicly critics. It is just a good try to ridiculize all the critics.

The other one is much better (likely because chessvibes/ chess.com is a big player) but also here we see again the fact that critics are not well perceived, again I quote:
"Your idea that you are objective is of course flawed, as you will certainly know. Yes, I try to go in that direction as well, so I know what you mean." Clearly playing the man which is totally unnecessary.

brabo wrote on 02/27/14 at 16:29:53:

This has not been my experience. If anything I would be more likely to claim that they err on the side of discussing it too much. For example here are two QC blog articles specifically responding at great length to critical reviews:
The difficulty of being Black
“Playing the Trompowsky” – IM Richard Pert responds to a critical review

ErictheRed wrote on 02/27/14 at 14:26:58:

There is a counter above each thread. Here it is standing already on 7336 times so that is a massive amount taking into account that only a bunch of people are writing in this thread. You are clearly underestimating the power of the internet. Just look at the number of guests online (with no writing possibilities so only readers) and you will notice it is always many times higher than the members.

tp2205 wrote on 02/27/14 at 13:50:51:


It's entirely plausible that the relevant people at Quality Chess are not, in fact, scouring our forums.  It isn't reasonable to think that they'll descend, deus ex machina, to resolve anything.  Stefan (or anyone else) needs to contact them directly and professionally.

By the way, what happens when a book wins Chesspub Opening Book of the Year?  As far as I know, it's just an informal vote among 5-dozen or so people on a chess forum.  And I like that, I genuinely like our little community, and I'm glad it's not as big as the forums at chess.com, for instance.  But we're a fairly small corner of the internet. Admittedly, MANY people who are interested in chess opening theory are Chess Publishing subscribers, but they don't frequent the forums.  I notice that some people lurk and read some analysis in subsections, but I'm not sure that many people outside of the 5-dozen or so who vote in the poll are reading this thread.  The webmaster knows, of course, but not me.

I say this because in my mind, this little thread is such an odd place for Stefan to air his grievances, even if they are justified (and the more I read, the more I think that they probably are, but I'm trying to stay neutral as I don't have any of the relevant material in front of me and haven't heard the other side's response).  For every thing there is a time and a place, and a proper manner, and I don't think that this thread is any of those things.

What is Stefan trying to accomplish--to sway our little Chesspub poll?  He may do that.  But if he wants a response from Quality Chess, what on Earth is he doing here?