Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Elburg on Win with the Stonewall Dutch

I am for the moment struggling with the Noteboom and some Stonewall lines and just note in passing that another review of 'Win with the Stonewall Dutch' has appeared. This time it's John Elburg - a little early with his reviews of August 1st. His review is positive (as they almost always are - even for quite poor books) and contains some useful information for potential buyers. Unfortunately he this time has missed the fact that Ivar Bern is a co-author (mentioning only Sverre Johnsen and Simen Agdestein). It's a pity that Elburg's command of the English language is lacking to the extent that it will be hard to find a complete sentence to quote. My guess is that Gambit on the book's info page will go for:
Conclusion: A very important reference work of the Dutch Stonewall!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great book. The Q&A format works very well in that you anticipated questions that real readers would ask if they had the opportunity to meet you. Giving thumbnail plan summaries eg. which pawn should recapture when a knight is exchanged on e4, is what makes your book especially useful.

Anonymous said...

forgot to leave my name on previous comment- Alan Kirshner Toledo Ohio USA

Sverre Johnsen said...

Dear Alan,

Names are not mandatory but they do add some weight to opinions and are a nice supplement to all the anonymous comments!

I am glad you liked the Q&As. They were not at all easy to write as the readers could be expected to be very varied in playing strength and experience with the Dutch and we were afraid to 'talk down' to the readers. Fortunately the experiment seems to have been generally well received.

One of my favourite books is Sadler's now somewhat dated 'Queen's Gambit Declined' which was based on complete games and an extensive Q&A system. However, we felt he overdid it just a little and wanted to try some additional ways to involve the reader (in particular the exercices).