Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Open for Comments

I am no experienced blogger and still need to experiment with my settings.

Today I opened for unregistered users to comment, just to see what happens. If there comes a lot of spam and flames, I will probably switch the parameters back again.

Addendum 16th February 2007
I didn't realize that all reader comments would be emailed to me for approval before appearing in the blog. But except for the delay, this may actually be a very good way of avoiding spam. So until further notice I leave my settings as they are.

It seems the best way to read comments is to click on the heading of the main entry.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sverre:

Excellent blog. Beautiful design and good content!

Odd R.

Sverre Johnsen said...

Thanks Odd,

I am glad to see you like the content!

As for the design, I am afraid I cannot take much of the honour. All I did was to pick one of the more classical designs offered at the blog provider at blogger.com.

Anonymous said...

Dear Sverre

I heard about your blog through an internet forum, and was interested to hear that you had posted some comments on my book.

By the way, before talking about that I would like to congratulate you on "The Ruy Lopez: A Guide For Black". I think that you and Leif have done an marvellous job. I was particularly impressed with the amount of new ideas for Black in the Zaitsev. The way in which you dealt with the problem of the Ng5 repetition was also superb.

I was very interested to read about your thoughts on my own book. You obviously know quite a lot about the Norwegian variation, so I was pleased to see that my recommendations largely met with your approval.
I was, however, rather shocked to read about the mistake in the Anand-Agdestein game! While there is no excuse for this error, I have checked my databases and now realise how it occurred. The problem is that Chessbase lists the game score as 16.c4 and later 18.Be3, while other sources (Informator, as well as Nigel Davies on Chesspublishing.com) give it as 16.Be3 and 18.c4. I must have accidentally combined two conflicting sources, with disastrous consequences!
As I said, there is no excuse for this - a mistake is a mistake, but I suppose the only good thing is that we can see that it has occurred under very specific circumstances, and therefore I hope it is unlikely to be representative of the entire book.

There was one other point which attracted my attention, regarding John Saunders' review on the BCM website in which he compares the analysis of the Worrall variation in our respective books. I'm afraid I must strongly disagree with your statement that he is "basically correct" when he says that the two sets of analysis diverge when I suggest 12.exd5. As you are no doubt aware, by move 14 we have arrived back at an identical position to which we both devote a diagram (page 349 of my book and page 160 of yours) when the analysis continues.
Saunders fails to see this, and so his 'comparison' must surely be viewed as woefully incorrect and misleading to potential readers.

Anyway, aside from that small point I have enjoyed your blog very much. Keep up the good work!

Best wishes,
Andrew Greet

Sverre Johnsen said...

Dear Andrew,

Thanks for your interest!

I will post a copy of this comment under my latest entry on the Norwegian variation (with the heading 'Greet on the Norwegian'. My comments will follow in time at that entry.