José Raúl Capablanca

Next project

Hi,

In today’s newsletter, I will announce my next book project. I have been wanting to learn how to use Overleaf to edit chess material. Overleaf is an online editing software based on LaTeX used to make nice-looking publications, often used in academia. Here is a peek of how it looks:

On the left is the text field where you do the writing and on the right the preview screen. You can then use a chess-package called xskak to enable diagrams and chess notations. So when typing a mainline you will write: \mainline{1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6}. You can then add variations by typing \variations{1. Nf3}.

To practice this I have taken the chess classic ‘Chess Fundamentals’ by Capablanca and edited it, added extra diagrams, and made an A4-page layout with single columns.
It is my plan to publish it soon on Amazon. This is the draft for the cover:

The bestselling version on Amazon has the material in double columns and condensed down to 138 pages to maximise profits. My version will be around the original 240 pages with around 100 extra diagrams added.

I think I will publish it in A4-format to leave room for notes on the pages and to make it possible to have the book open on a table without it closing all the time 📖 The only downside is that it will be a bit large to fit on the bookshelf. What do you think?

Video recommendation

Finally, I just want to share a video with GM Jacob Aagaard made by Chessbase India. I really enjoyed the positions featured and was overall an interesting interview about the training Shankland his done during!

If you want to quickly discover new videos like the one below remember to use www.howtoplaychess.online

Best,
Martin