Jacob Aagaards ferske forord til boka

In 2002 I helped some friends with the writing of two books for Everyman Chess, Meeting 1.e4 and Meeting 1.d4. On the first book I worked as an editor only, while with the second book I wrote it together with Esben Lund (now a strong IM with a GM-norm in his pouch). We focused on the Tarrasch Defence for Black, with additional systems against the Reti, London and so on.

This was primarily Esben’s project and he wrote most of the Tarrasch chapters, especially on his favourite line 9.¥g5 c4. I had the thankless task of trying to make 9...cxd4 work, something I probably did not do too badly, but on the other hand I cannot imagine that anything I did influenced practice significantly.

This is the main reason why I decided to offer my services to Nikolaos Ntirlis (referred to as Nikos in the rest of the book); I wanted to do better than first time around. This we have done. Nikos at some point said that we had moved the theory on the Tarrasch a few years forward, which is a very kind thing to say, as it is essentially he who has done this.

Our working relationship on this book has been one of the ideas man and his editor. Nikos started out with lots of ideas everywhere (based on a massive amount of research and sheer hard work), while I analysed everything carefully, checked if any games unknown to Nikos were available, and then wrote and rewrote every sentence of the book.

Esben and I wrote together in the same room and sought each other’s advice, while Nikos and I are on two far corners of the European continent. We met up only briefly in Glasgow in February 2011 and are together in Greece in November 2011, at the time this book is being printed. However our work has been truly co-authored and not split as with my previous experience with the Tarrasch. It was definitely more social the first time around, but I think the reader will be happier with the result of the less social and more analytical approach taken this time around. It has been seven years since I last wrote an opening book, and I have never had an opening book published by Quality Chess. Not only is this the start of the third part of my career as a chess writer, the first being working for Everyman and the second being essentially the Attacking Manuals and the spin-off prequel Practical Chess Defence, it is hopefully also the beginning of a close working relationship with Nikos. We have planned a number of things to work on together in the future and I look forward to it a lot.

I think this is a good book on a good opening and I hope you will enjoy it.
Jacob Aagaard, Halkidiki, Greece, November 2011