Another time Andrew Martin gave all the TCR subscribers a FREE and fully detailed ChessBase and PDF file of 1. b4. It's like a book but FREE. This past week he sent me another FREEBIE for Semester 10. It's already been sent out to subscribers. Complete manuscript in PDF and .cbv (ChessBase) format.
I started this publication at the end of 2006 and it came out every week. I must've been nuts. Now it is only every two weeks. It's over 1800 pages now... a monumental sum. Are my fingers bleeding yet?
What does it include? Everything. What doesn't it include? Kid stuff, politics, ads for tournaments. Virtually NO international or national chess news either; ChessBase and the like have that. In issue #120 Andrew Martin writes about Queen sacrifices in opening theory and how sometimes you can take a beating even when it has been published and tried.
In issue #121 there will be a lengthy endgame article where CJS Purdy looks to have made a mistake in discussing a Rooks and pawns ending (which ended in a win but shouldn't have.) Maybe there will be even more on the endgame in that issue.
Back to 120, I write about people who have contacted Thinkers' Press (me) about publishing their chess book and how some "expectations" are worse than believing the Chicago Cubs could win the world series.
Also in that issue will be a 4-page book review of In Your Face Chess Novelties written by a reviewer who at least knows what the hell he is writing about! By the way, he came to me, this wasn't a solicitation for hire type of deal.
Finally, what it all comes down to is TRUST and $69.95 for 10 issues and to include a CD of some type you can play in your car. The bonus is the CD. The first issue #118 was about 28 pages, #119 was about 16, and #120 looks to be about 22 (I think). So those are bonuses too.
I have felt, for all 120 issues that these are great buys and bonuses in themselves. In the past two weeks I went through the first 91 issues and I was amazed at ALL the good stuff in them. When I get a chance to put together a detailed ad, I will tell you more about them. In the meantime, if you trust ME I think you will be more than pleasantly surprised. I have about 7 more people to resubscribe from the previous semester to bring it to a complete sweep once again. I love it when that happens. Some two dozen or so readers have been with me since the beginning--I think that says a lot, don't you?
What HOOKS you? Try reading some and you will find out. The content is ALWAYS different and each semester seems different. You are juiced and jazzed each time. I get private emails from people which I occasionally publish in which they tell me they eagerly look forward to each and EVERY issue and get spazzy when Friday morning rolls around because usually it is in their Inbox by then but always before Noon on Friday. It is like clockwork.
What is one of the purposes of TCR? One is to make you a stronger player. Another is to show you chess is fun and you can feel it in your bones. A third is that tough one, to educate you... lots of people hate being educated. Hey, wasn't college enough? Probably not. Are you busy? Who isn't?
Lots of people like to give their opinions on a wide variety of stuff. I try to avoid that (although some disagree because they don't know the difference between opinion and a thoughtful judgment). I reorient news, I tell you what I know, and I deduce other things. I expect to go over the new ChessBase11 package. I was trying to use it last night to determine the name of an opening and it was a total irritation. That's the kind of thing you will get from me.
So sign up. And while you are at it, get your 2011 Gold Card for $50 and save a pile of dough throughout the year. Signup time ends March 31, 2011.
I can send you a sample if you want but in all the years I have sent out requested samples, hardly ANYONE subscribed because of the sample. Most subscribed when I talked them into it OR they new me from previous publications and kept hanging in there. Writing this journal is what keeps me in touch with chess.
At the same time, I am working on some very NEW ideas for the Chess Book Camp--which have neither been published before or, only in disguise... and, they are worthwhile. Chess is never short of NEW material, just short of good, new writers.
Remember, just $69.96 for 10 fat issues. TCR i NOT "New in Chess," and has no pretensions to be--you are paying for something entirely different. TCR avoids the gossip and opinion business too. How tragic to rely on that.
bob@thinkerspressinc.com
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