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Very Hot Topic (More than 25 Replies) Taylor's King's Gambit book pulled? (Read 102301 times)
Stefan Buecker
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Re: Taylor's King's Gambit book pulled?
Reply #15 - 04/24/14 at 23:16:48
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RdC wrote on 04/24/14 at 08:10:56:
I don't have any books by Tim Taylor, but is it fair to say that he concentrates on openings where even a game by an FM is a rarity?

Timothy Taylor chooses topics with a fighting spirit. Bent Larsen reviewed his book on Bird's Opening in Kaissiber 26, and while Larsen criticized some variations, he generally liked the book as a source of inspiration. Taylor tries to detect new ideas. Bird, Alekhine's Defence or King's Gambit - in my view all of these are first-class openings. - However, the KG in particular is such a difficult topic that an author should welcome all the input/advice/corrections which he can get from an experienced editor like Jon Tait.
  
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fling
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Re: Taylor's King's Gambit book pulled?
Reply #14 - 04/24/14 at 16:51:02
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katar wrote on 04/24/14 at 10:24:33:
As Mr. Buecker wisely said: The chess world is too small for quarrels.


Are you trying to pick a fight? This was my idea (N), I believe. Grin
  
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Re: Taylor's King's Gambit book pulled?
Reply #13 - 04/24/14 at 12:55:20
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Bibs
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Re: Taylor's King's Gambit book pulled?
Reply #12 - 04/24/14 at 12:23:50
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GMTonyKosten wrote on 04/24/14 at 09:54:21:
GabrielGale wrote on 04/24/14 at 03:38:16:
What is being said and will be said on ChessPub Forum, if allowed, can and will probably get very toxic!

Prophylactic locking?!

Hassle avoidance rather than chastity belts.
  
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katar
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Re: Taylor's King's Gambit book pulled?
Reply #11 - 04/24/14 at 10:24:33
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Personally I don't agree with what Tim had to say or the way he said it, but I applaud the civil tone in this thread so far. 

According to his blog it seems that Tim's wife desperately needs a surgery that the family can't afford without insurance.  I imagine perhaps Taylor was counting on some income that didn't materialize-- I understand how that might provoke an emotional outburst under the circumstances.

As Mr. Buecker wisely said: The chess world is too small for quarrels.
  

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Re: Taylor's King's Gambit book pulled?
Reply #10 - 04/24/14 at 10:10:14
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RdC wrote on 04/24/14 at 08:10:56:
The Kings Bishop gambit cannot really be avoided

True that 3.Bc4 can't be avoided after 2...exf4, but the Bishop's gambit can be avoided after 1.e4 e5 and then either 2...Bc5 or 2...d5.
  

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GMTonyKosten
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Re: Taylor's King's Gambit book pulled?
Reply #9 - 04/24/14 at 09:54:21
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GabrielGale wrote on 04/24/14 at 03:38:16:
What is being said and will be said on ChessPub Forum, if allowed, can and will probably get very toxic!

Prophylactic locking?!
  
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RdC
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Re: Taylor's King's Gambit book pulled?
Reply #8 - 04/24/14 at 08:10:56
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Jonathan Tait wrote on 04/24/14 at 06:59:21:
But his assessment that White is okay in the critical line (4 d4 Nf6 5 Nc3 Bb4 6 Ne2 f3) seems to be borne out by your own research.


From the viewpoint of the practical player of 1. .. e5, you want something that gives Black equality and a chance for White to go wrong. The Kings Bishop gambit cannot really be avoided and the line with Nf6 and Nc6 looks as good as any with the added advantage that you can also get it by transposition. While some of the lines of the Kings Knights gambit can get frightening, particularly those where White sacrifices on f7, a line that involves playing Nge2 doesn't seem scary and I would have thought Black had a playable position even if he doesn't know or forgets about 6. ..f3.

Perhaps Shaw exaggerates in calling the Nc6/Nf6 lines a refutation, but it remains a practical defence.

I don't have any books by Tim Taylor, but is it fair to say that he concentrates on openings where even a game by an FM is a rarity?

The sequence 1. e4 e5 2. f4 Nc6 3. Nf3 f5 can be justified on positional grounds as a mirror of the Tarrasch. I doubt there's a convincing refutation, unless, as in the Tarrasch the resulting isolated pawn can become a problem.
  
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Jonathan Tait
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Re: Taylor's King's Gambit book pulled?
Reply #7 - 04/24/14 at 06:59:21
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Stefan Buecker wrote on 04/24/14 at 06:52:00:
It will be interesting to learn whether he has found something superior to the ideas so far published in the chesspub.


The answer to that is "no". He only found out about Shaw's book when he'd finished his own manuscript and decided to let the two books stand alone. But his assessment that White is okay in the critical line (4 d4 Nf6 5 Nc3 Bb4 6 Ne2 f3) seems to be borne out by your own research.
  

blog inspired by Bronstein's book, but using my own games: http://200opengames.blogspot.co.uk/
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Re: Taylor's King's Gambit book pulled?
Reply #6 - 04/24/14 at 06:52:45
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Bibs wrote on 04/23/14 at 23:54:33:
Fair enough, a criticism was linked to, the person criticised has now replied. Equals.
Better now that chesspub not get involved, not continue this if one party is 'getting legal', I humbly suggest.


I dunno; I'd quite like to talk about the editing process, explain some of the things Tim took objection to (referring to extracts from his blogpost, given in italics below), which can be done without getting into legal stuff.

The very first thing I noticed was the terrible English that was inserted into the book – Most of the examples Tim gives here (pages 75, 76, 110, 192) look like "leftovers"; that is, when the text is being tweaked, there are occasionally extraneous words left in by mistake. Authors can do that themselves of course when writing the book. Proofreading should eliminate them. The other one (page 149), "themself", is a reflexive pronoun of the gender neutral singular "they". (Example: "It would be better if they did it themself". You could use "themselves" in the same way, but "themself" emphasizes the singular form of the usually plural pronoun.) It's clear that Tim didn't like "themself", but it's not incorrect.

the very first diagram in the book was out of place! ... Everyman requires a chess author to submit the games in Chessbase format. I did this on the King’s Gambit. It’s impossible to misplace a diagram on Chessbase, as the software generates the diagram from the game in question! – That's correct up to a point. ChessBase does generate the diagrams when they're exported from the games. But when we add further diagrams (or change diagrams to fit the typeset) we use a different process: click the relevant position in the relevant game, use the copy diagram function, and paste the diagram into the document. Yes, I see the first diagram was wrong – I'm not sure how that happened; maybe I had another game open in the other position and copied that by mistake; stupid – but again proofreading should pick that up.

The bit about the dots within moves (e.g. 1.Nf3 vs. 1 Nf3) shows a similar unfamiliarity with process. There's no problem at all removing the dots. It can be done in seconds with a few specific Replace functions. (And it's not just Everyman house style; Batsford and Gambit do it this way too – maybe it's an English thing.)

Tait had written in his own variations, often not correct. He is not a titled chess player; he is definitely not an International Master. – Actually I am an IM (SIM in fact) at correspondence chess (but okay, I don't regard that as real as a proper OTB IM title either). As for inserting my own variations: analytical corrections/queries were mostly referred back to Tim for his consideration (some he accepted, some he didn't – fair enough). Occasionally, I might insert something trivial extra, for explanatory purposes (the sort of thing that would be prefaced by "Ed." in a magazine), and add text to that, but these would (almost always) have been thrown up by Fritz running in the background. I'm not sure what went wrong in the case he mentions (maybe I missed a move out when typing them into the document), but I can't look at it until Tim gives the exact reference.

He reversed meanings of key lines, like where I said Grandmaster Larry Evans was “discouraged” when playing Bobby Fischer—and Tait changed the whole meaning by rewriting the text to “not discouraged.” – This is the only example I've seen (so far). I inserted "not" into the text because "Evans is discouraged or oblivious" (as written) didn't make sense with what followed. If Evans was discouraged, his play would reflect that – i.e. he would change his play – but he carried on regardless. So he was either oblivious or not discouraged.

If Jonathan Tait had tried his vicious, yet childlike attack on my book (apparently because I had refuted, in my book, the above mentioned Nordic Counter Gambit which is his favorite – This is just silly. There's no "apparently" there. Editing may seem vicious but at most it's ruthless, all in the cause of trying to enable authors to say what they want in the best possible way (of which they're not always the best judge). Nor is 3...f5 refuted, incidentally, though Tim found a very nice idea in one line of it.

I am running into sentences and sometimes whole paragraphs deleted from the text (one of the paragraphs featuring a great quote from GM Joe Gallagher is just gone). These are exceptionally hard to spot, as it’s hard to “see something” that is not there! – I can't answer these without knowing the precise points they occur. But nothing is changed or deleted for no reason. For instance, if something has been deleted, that might because the author has already said it elsewhere and forgotten about it.

In general, writing is tweaked for all sorts of reasons. As editor you get a double overview, both micro (the minute details of the text) and macro (how things follow each other and how the whole all hangs together). An annotator, although they may have an overall plan for what they want to say, will mostly annotate move by move, not noticing repetition of words and phrases, the way they're saying things the same way, and other such inadvertent stylistic errors. And there are particular ones that afflict chess writers, such as reverse sentence construction (a clause with the verb towards the end; very simple example "Better is 1 Nf3", which just reads abominably, though it is sometimes necessary to put things this way) or something I call Annotator's But (a clause, followed by "but" and a refuting clause, which gets incredibly tedious to read after a while). It's part of an editor's job to correct for style, which means tweaking the text. But it's done while maintaining the author's style as much as possible – the success of which can be seen by the fact that such tweaking is hardly ever noticed.

Okay, some authors are precious about their writing, some aren't. Another IM told me recently that I'm the best editor he's ever worked with; whereas, as a writer, I definitely fall into the "precious" category myself. But I'm a bit surprised about Tim because he's never complained before, and his submitted text always contains loads of abbreviations which have to be rewritten anyway. (And on a case by case basis; they can't just be globally replaced.) I've never minded doing that for Tim's books because I like them. He does his own work and always has interesting things to say. His King's Gambit book was good too – but it did need editing, whatever he thinks.
  

blog inspired by Bronstein's book, but using my own games: http://200opengames.blogspot.co.uk/
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Stefan Buecker
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Re: Taylor's King's Gambit book pulled?
Reply #5 - 04/24/14 at 06:52:00
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A quote from Timothy Taylor worth noting (from the link in the OP):

Quote:
Remember, I advocate, like Fischer, the Bishop’s Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Bc4! One of the side points of the book is that I completely and totally bust GM Shaw’s “refutation” of the Bishop’s Gambit with 3… Nc6?!


It will be interesting to learn whether he has found something superior to the ideas so far published in the chesspub.
  
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Re: Taylor's King's Gambit book pulled?
Reply #4 - 04/24/14 at 03:38:16
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I agree with Bibs that this should be locked ASAP. What is being said and will be said on ChessPub Forum, if allowed, can and will probably get very toxic!
  

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A Year With Nessie ...... aka GM John Shaw's The King's Gambit (http://thekinggambit.blogspot.com.au/)
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Bibs
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Re: Taylor's King's Gambit book pulled?
Reply #3 - 04/23/14 at 23:54:33
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Fair enough, a criticism was linked to, the person criticised has now replied. Equals.
Better now that chesspub not get involved, not continue this if one party is 'getting legal', I humbly suggest.

Tony K, Moderators, lock, move on.
  
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Jonathan Tait
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Re: Taylor's King's Gambit book pulled?
Reply #2 - 04/23/14 at 23:27:01
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I wondered when Tim was going to get round to slagging me off on his blog. Seems he now has.

For what it's worth, I've edited six of his books before this one and he's never had any problems with any of them – even though the amount of work that's required to tidy them up is astonishing. Okay, some new errors will occur in the editing process, but that's what proofreading is for.
  

blog inspired by Bronstein's book, but using my own games: http://200opengames.blogspot.co.uk/
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Re: Taylor's King's Gambit book pulled?
Reply #1 - 04/23/14 at 22:38:26
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That makes very interesting reading. Seems Everyman behaved very unprofessionally indeed!
  
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