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Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Guardian Chess Book of the Year Award goes to Jacob Aagaard's Attacking Manual 2

Chess news and chess trivia blog (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2010


Hi Everyone,

It's that time of the year when everything is being summed up and '--- of the Year' awards are being announced. One of our favourites is of course 'The Guardian Chess Book of the Year'!

The award has gone to The Attacking Manual, Volume 2: Technique and Praxis: Technique and Praxis v. 2 by Jacob Aagaard. The six shortlisted titles for the award included:


  • John Healy's Coffeehouse Chess Tactics: An unusual book in that it's a collection of games, fragments and autobiographical gobbets by an unranked, though obviously talented, player. But, the judges felt, while the writing was much more literary than is usual in a chess book, they were left wanting more chess.
  • Andrew Soltis's Studying Chess Made Easy: is useful and accessible, but again there was a feeling that it's a little light.
  • Garry Kasparov's Kasparov vs Karpov 1988-2009 continues the series begun in 2003 with My Great Predecessors. The judges said they admired the scale of Kasparov's enterprise, but found the formula too familiar.








Eventually the judges picked Jacob Aagaard's Attacking Manual 2 (Quality Chess) as the Chess Book of the Year. The judges said Aagaard delivers opinionated and sometimes biting judgments, and more importantly, he has found some remarkable and original ideas that enrich our understanding of attacking play. This is a case where computer software has been put to good use to bring out the beauty in a game, but he is not a slave to the machine, going his own way when necessary.

So congratulations to Aagaard and Quality Chess. Find a neat chess example from the wining book at this Guardian page.

From Alexandra Kosteniuk's
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5 comments:

  1. Hey I just bought that book. Wow.

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  2. Sebastian Wolff, New YorkNovember 9, 2010 at 10:54 AM

    All of those are great books indeed. The judges must have had a tough time selecting. Why don't we have an Alexandra Kosteniuk Book of the Year Award? Or a Chessblog Book of the Year Award. That would be cool unless it sounds like being partial or something which the Chess Queen would not like to do. But I would love something like Chess Queen's Book of the Year Award. Dunno if it holds good. We still love you nevertheless Chess Queen.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unfortunately I love all those six books. Great ones really.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jane Bentley, LondonNovember 9, 2010 at 11:02 AM

    Thanks for leading me to the Award. Do read the Guardian off and on but guess missed this one.

    ReplyDelete

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