LAST DAY FOR FREE BLACKBURNE BOOK

People who know me know I am big on personal responsibility but in business sometimes it is necessary to remind clients because as I have found out myself, it is too easy to forget. Age either brings humility or arrogance, but not much in between.

So this is a reminder that if you have been after the really cool booklet I've put out on Blackurne, 41 pages of him titled Blackburne The Black Death in Spades, then today is your last day to get a FREE copy. To get that FREE copy you had to have spent at least $100 in the months of January and February with me. You do that and you get this $12.95 book free and free shipping of it.

As I write I just got confirmation that the books were released from the printer. It should be shipped by about the end of this week. I have already begun work on the next one, for the month's of March and April and you won't want to miss: Alekhine The Executioner. This book will be third in the series and this guy was a real sandblaster. It will mostly be games you DO NOT know. Where do I find them? My secret, but I have a lot of archives at my office. I still have to input them and I still have to put notes to them and clean it up, so it's not like I do nothing. The artwork is already being worked on too.

On top of that, I am close to finishing up two more projects:

a) Chess EXTRAS #5 which has some really neat stuff in it (40 letter sized pages); and

b) Lasker & His Contemporaries #6 which has a big section on that Massachusetts' genius, Harry Nelson Pillsbury! $25 + $3.50 for mailing (in the USA) if you act now. Otherwise it goes to $34.95 plus mailing charges. At least 64 pages, letter sized.

If you don't subscribe to Chess EXTRAS you should consider it. $65 for 240 letter-size pages of chess' pot-pourri stuff, collected by me now and from the past, most of which has not been in print before. Information will be forthcoming soon. If you have a GOLD CARD 2011 you can get one for $50 if you order by March 31. One issue to go and I find another box the other night full of goodies to be published.

NOTE: Buying Lasker or Chess Extras also counts toward your $100 or more total in the month you bought it in.

Contact me: bob@thinkerspressinc.com

CAN BOOKS ACTUALLY HELP ONE WIN GAMES?

Ed Reedy claims my book Lasker The Ultimate Streetfighter did just that, and recently. He scored 4-1 in a reserve event for chess newcomers.

Ed, an expert in martial arts, was at my Last Chess Clinic in October. As is common in my events there was a gift bag and one of the included items was that book, which had JUST come from the printer the week before.

Ed said he read it, cover to cover, maybe twice. He is my first feedback on this book.

What is contained were brawls. In most of the games Lasker was new to the NY crowd, and others. He waded into complications, strenuous endgames, and his mastery was unparalleled. On A.J. Goldsby's web site (AJ is a master) he claims that Jeff Sonas, a rating statistician, evaluated Lasker's TACTICAL play at OVER the 3000 Elo level! This modest 50 page pamphlet proves it!

I've sold out of two printings so far, but some more are coming. It's a whopping $12.95, replete with notes and diagrams, 40+ games, all wins, from either side of the board. Add $3.00 for shipping and handling in the USA. One of chess' bargains!

It's part of my series, The Chess Gangs of New York and London. Book #2, on Blackburne, is at the printer's now. I should have it in 10 days or so. Ask how you can get FREE copies of these books.

Contact: bob@thinkerspressinc.com

ART AND DESIGN CHESS ISSUE

Where do artists and designers get their ideas and inspirations? Often, from each other.

How do they do when it comes to chess. Often, not too well.

There's a chasm between being able to design and knowing something about chess and being able to design and not knowing anything (or hardly anything) about chess. But the "rules" are not fast nor do they always make sense. I have no problem with that. The older I get the more I find rules to be disruptive rather than helpful, and often they are "created" by those who don't know enough to know how to apply them. But, maybe we should at least have a "starting point."

In the upcoming issue of Chess EXTRAS, No. 5, I explore some of this, visually from "Deception in Art" on the cover, to Magritte, to kid's and beginner's books, and in the wide world of chess goofiness.

So, to answer some questions, "Yes, it is coming, but probably won't arrive until March." There is no dearth of material, I have lots of it... just the dearth of time. It took a while for sales to climb in the 1990s before I could hire extra people to do the things I now do solo. Phone answering, order taking and shipping, graphics, books and catalog elements for future mailings, watching the DVDs to be reviewed, and of course, the most time consuming and non-money making aspect of all, bookkeeping.

So hang on to your bowler, Chess EXTRAS will be here soon. (Lots of bowlers in the Magritte arena.)

An Explanation of what Chess EXTRAS is: Size wise it is 36-40 pages, but I think all 4 issues so far have been 40 pages each. A little editorial content, but it is whatever strikes my fancy about chess. In the first two issues of CE I spent some space writing about my 1971 trip to Denver to see the Fischer-Larsen match using notes I made during that adventure. I even wrote about some time spent with Bobby Fischer while he asked me questions about my "chess on stamps" business! Frank Brady didn't cover everything! This leads me to believe his book, ENDGAME, isn't the last book on Fischer. There will always be new discoveries, but I don't intend to write one. I put my efforts with Gufeld in that direction many years ago in another TPi book which is out of print.

Chess EXTRAS is letter size in scope, in color, often with many pictures, and depicts unusual stuff about our game--even some positions sent to me from GM Karsten Müller which show problems for chess computers to analyze and their inability for the software to do a good job of determining, win, draw, or loss. There was an article also, which I found to be most important about chess openings, in which big computer systems have already determined the FATE of many chess openings, through repeated trial runs (called replications)—and the results are a little surprising.

In the current issue we have some pictures from Bob Woodworth of GM Patrick Wolff playing at a Warren Buffett gig in Omaha for the shareholders. Not great pictures mind you, but "evidence" chess is still alive and useful even in business settings. Chess EXTRAS, in some ways, is a hodge podge, a pot pourri about something other than the analytical side, though I also published that in a game between Lasker and Pillsbury from the British Chess Magazine many moons ago where I concluded that the annotator, Mr. Mason, must have been in the bag as he got near the end of his musings!

I can send you a small sampler I created, for FREE, if you ask. For those who want to subscribe, it's $65 for all six issues. If you own a 2011 Gold Card it is $50. It will be downloaded via PDF to you for you to print out and read.

Oh yes, Readers can send things in of interest. And now and again I publish almost forgotten photos of something I was involved in, many years ago, chesswise (usually). I'm amazed that some of these show up, but I have boxes of photos.

Contact me: bob@thinkerspressinc.com

Even if you got snow this weekend, like I did, have a great weekend. Stay inside, go through my catalogs (or blogs), and send an order via email. Keep the Post Office guys busy. I don't need to be kept busy any more than I am, but it's nice to pay the never ending supply of bills.

AS DR. PHIL MIGHT ASK...

"How's this Blog working for you?"

Glad you asked Phil. It's doing fine.

Yesterday a new client contacted me and in his email he asked a few questions. In the course of such he told me a little about himself and that he was switching "allegiance" from another chess vendor to me. "Allegiance" is my word, but it means the same thing he wrote. He liked the way I write and what I write about. I can't take credit for that, I give that to God.

Loyalty of any kind has become a scarce "commodity." There is still "branding" out there (look at Apple, or Best Buy, Facebook, Borders, and such), but nowadays people also think Amazon, Wal-Mart when it comes to watching their wallet or purse. But as I've explained before, Amazon doesn't CARE about YOU, no matter how much or how often you spend with them. They don't cook up "events," they don't "know" you, and whether or not you are a chess master or an average player means ZIP to them. That's the SCALE of their business (to read more on SCALE and Business levels, go today to: sethgodin.typepad.com). But they STILL don't care.

As you have noticed while reading the past week, I am looking at a trip to Minnesota for a couple days, probably July, to be with people I know and want to know better; read my posts for the past week. My new client is interested too! Does that mean he will come? Maybe. But he's interested... that makes THREE of you already, up from none last week!

This is HOW I get things started. Then, I go into action. It juices my brain. Interaction also fuels more ideas and finally, there is some kind of a program... but the main emphasis always IS: that you have a good time because THEN I have a good time! I have to provide BENEFITS for you, first.

THINK ABOUT THIS: Older folks KNOW where it's at! (You can quote me on this.) I know this is true because EVERY time, locally, a new joint was opened which catered to the 50+ crowd, it was eventually RUINED by also attracting the YOUNGER crowds. They "liked" what we were doing, the music, the atmosphere. But the original crowd didn't like their barging in and ultimately it would change everything. The older folks left (the ones with the $$$) and eventually the place would go belly up and everyone would wonder, "Wot happened?" I said "locally" but it happens nationally too. I can remember my sister-in-law. She and her husband retired and moved from MASS to NC, where the "people were such hicks," in so many words. The pace of work was slower, etc. They said "people down here don't like people coming down from the North to retire because they try to tell the North Carolinians how to live." Guess who was there first?

So I welcome my new friend, but I won't mention his name since that might make his previous vendor sad, upset, or pissed off... and that's just not necessary.

Now I need to make a couple phone calls and get more information about who and when and where. Thanks for reading... feel free to offer suggestions. Years ago, for Chess Festival III, Allan Savage suggested I have the new and young Scottish GM Jonathan Rowson as a guest. A very fine idea as he had just written a terrific chess book. I had him come and he wowed the crowds (about 54 paids + others). That's how it sometimes gets started.

Contact me at: bob@thinkerspressinc.com

UPDATES AT THINKERS' PRESS INC

Too many things going on to stick to one topic today:

1) Have received the OK from Dr. Nathan Divinsky to use several of his great articles which were held over from Lasker & His Contemporaries #5. They will appear in issues #6 and #7.

2) Chess historian and all around nice guy and writer for McFarland, John S. Hilbert, has agreed to using his Part II material from Lasker #5 IN Lasker #7. See, Lasker #6 is already pretty full and Hilbert's article on Lasker coming to New York in 1892 is quite lengthy.

I am beating myself up to get Blackburne The Black Death in Spades off to the printer, tonight or tomorrow. Also will be included a nice little caricature of Blackburne by J. Hesse asking for "whiskey and lime" (from about 1905!)

Spending some more time with web guy tonight. When evening rolls around it's hard to estimate how tiring all of this is after a busy day of handling unbelievable amounts of paper work (still trying to get caught up from when I was in Georgia).

So... I better get back to it... and by the way, I am also working on a BIG SALES catalog for Small Presses so I can clear out much of that inventory. My goal is to beat all Amazon prices but, I may not!! Reason: There are 650 other people that I email to who never respond. I suspect I could meet each one personally, offer them a free chess book, surrogate substitute for their play at the local club, and it wouldn't phase them! Not at all. They may be zombies. I've asked them if they want to have their name deleted from my lists and even that is too much work! Of course you heard about the guy who was elected to the Procrastinators Club of America. He never got around to voting himself in or out, and the members who did vote were apparently not procrastinators, and so felt guilty about voting for themselves. That's politics folks!

Contact me at: bob@thinkerspressinc.com

HAVE ALREADY HEARD FROM ONE ON THE SOIREE!

People I've known over the years cover just about ever strata of life. One thing most of them have in common is stress on the job. You may not think so, but as you get older you find out it WAS true! I know I did. I never really thought I was under "stress" even though I had lots of responsibilities that I could and did handle. Now when I look back I see how "useless" many of them were--should have been lower on my "priorities list."

So the chess soiree I have been talking about recently offers you a chance to get away from your current grind whether you are retired (even that can be a grind due to its very "unstructured nature" one person (actually two) told me).

Minnesota is beautiful and if I can get 10-20 people to come it will be another great event. Look at the Chess Festivals... they kept growing, so did the Chess Clinics... but each time I feel I have to start completely over again because, I get the thought which I think occurs to some, "How can it be better than what I've already had?" That's nothing more than the fear of "lack of imagination."

You don't even have to make a commitment at this moment, just tell me you are interested and I will keep you up to date! It looks like:

1) a wooded area, log cabins and main area, but a lake in Minnesota.

2) meeting old and new friends (always some new people),

3) chess is the main topic on the menu but there could be other things too,

4) you don't have to be a genius (most people aren't anyway),

5) we will have a "great fireside" get together,

6) tell us what is on YOUR mind and we will tell you what is on ours... and

7) I will have a very special guest or there will be no event.

Probably be two nights where you can get away from depressing news, and all the b.s. that goes on in the lives of each of us.

Great food. Great friendships. Great times. Sometimes between June and August it looks like.

We won't allow you to HUG any bears!

Contact me at:

bob@thinkerspressinc.com

CHESS IN MINNESOTA JUNE-AUGUST

My very good friend Dale Suilmann knows what I am up to--he lives in Elk River, MN.

I want to plan a chess event (soiree) between June and August up north. Reasonably close to an airport, a lodge, where we can rest and relax in comfort. Dink around with some chess but in the main be there for a good time, log cabins, dining rooms, etc. No damn TV. Throw your cells in one of the 10,000 lakes they have there.

I will bring a Special guest, we would have some special topics, and probably a sales table as well as some special artifacts for the occasion.

Dale has kindly sent me info on at least 4 separate places--they all have a certain novelty in them, especially winter time!! Yikes, none of us want that after this winter (I am presuming.) But if any Blog readers have any favorite spots in MN or know of some, send that info along would you?

And if you are interested in coming for a couple days, please drop me a line right away, okay? (again). As I've said before, this is not about the National Open, the World Open, or the US Open... they are doing their own thing--so if you are going to those, I suspect I won't hear from you unless you know a great place in MN to have a great chess time. I might even consider hiring a special photographer for this too. A place for spouses to come, buddies, new friends.

At any rate, if you have thoughts and druthers, drop me a line at:

bob@thinkerspressinc.com

It will probably be an intimate setting for 10-20 people. There is a fee + the cost of the lodge setting where you would be staying. This all sounds like common sense, but, I am taking NO chances.