UNDERHANDED CHESS by Jerry Sohl, from ReAnimus Press

Hi, all! Kohai with chess.com support suggested this was the best place to announce this, so here, for your edification:

ReAnimus Press is happy to announce the ebook publication of UNDERHANDED CHESS, by Jerry Sohl.

~ A hilarious handbook of devious diversions and stratagems for winning at chess ~

Available from:

ReAnimus Press Store: http://ReAnimus.com/store?item=1244 (EPUB and MOBI for Kindle, Nook, iPad, Android, etc.)
Amazon: http://Amazon.com/dp/B0098DZHLM (Kindle)

With tongue in cheek and laughter aforethought, Jerry Sohl takes his readers on a merry romp through all the deceits and tricks of one-upmanship as it is practiced in the game of chess. Drawing from his own experiences, he sets out in amusing detail a host of put-offs, come-ons, psychological maneuverings, lures, and frauds to accomplish checkmate. All illustrated with drawings by artist Roy Schlemme.

The author's inventiveness is limitless. All kinds of ploys are carefully described: the amazing effectiveness of reverse polarity; adopting some of Bobby Fischer's tactics; the Freudian gambit; the Blencher; the Hassled Castle; befuddling rule fanatics; talking your way to victory; coffeehouse counter-gambits; when and how to lose; advanced duplicity; and chess of the last resort.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1: THE FIRST MOVE
2: PRELIMINARIES AND PREPARATIONS
3: THE PROPER SPIRIT
4: HOW TO TALK A GOOD GAMBIT
5: HOW TO BEFUDDLE RULE FANATICS
6: HOW TO PLAY AGAINST WEIRDOS
7: COFFEEHOUSE CHESS COUNTERGAMBITS
8: WHEN TO LOSE
9: ADVANCED DUPLICITY
10: DESPERATE MOVES CHESS OF THE LAST RESORT
APPENDIX: USEFUL TRIVIA

Jerry Sohl is the author of over 20 books, as well as many episodes of TV shows such as Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, and several feature films. ReAnimus Press is pleased to be bringing back his work back in ebook form.

Thanx-I will buy the book

Hi, Streetfighter, yes, I'm new here, so I can't answer your question, other than to say that I explained my situation and asked the support folks for guidance before I registered. An admin named Kohai recommended I post here. FWIW, as a forum owner myself (and, for what even less it's worth, as the founder of the world's first Internet Service Provider, which I founded in order to allow the public onto the Internet, back in the day when the public couldn't get on the net, and who then had to face lots of these kinds of issues), I do think that as a general guideline, members should be allowed to announce their own on-topic projects. (Not to do so too frequently as that clogs things up; certainly there should be reasonable restrictions on announcing off-topic projects; and of course disallowing true spam such as posts for, ahem, enhancement products, or malware sites. Those are pretty obvious.) On my own forums I don't mind it, so long as it isn't high volume. What also works for many sites I'm aware of is to have a forum specifically where members can make such announcements. There have been many important things announced in this way, such as Linux, PHP, PERL, Mosaic (the first web browser), Amazon.com, and so on.

I didn't and don't want to upset any apple carts (which is why I inquired first), so I was cool with whatever the admins decided.

The aburt behind nyx?? Good to know you're still alive and kickin', Professor! 

Stop advertising your own books! I am 100% sure you are NOT a fan, but the author.

Why would anyone bother to create a new account and advertise for somebody else? Seems very suspicious.

If kohai said it's okay to advertise the book, that pretty much settles it, no?

Hi, SerbianChessStar, unfortunately your "100%" isn't quite 100%. :) I'm not the author, I'm the publisher -- I'm Andrew Burt, and I founded ReAnimus Press. The author, Jerry Sohl, died about ten years ago. I'm working with his daughter to republish all his books, primarily as ebooks.

This is (currently) the only chess related book we've published. We have about 60 books either in print or in production. We work with a lot of science fiction authors, like Ben Bova, Ursula Le Guin, etc., since I'm a science fiction writer myself and know many SF authors. But we don't do just SF, and, as it turned out, Jerry Sohl had an interesting book on chess that I thought folks here might be interested in.

I'd love to do more chess books. What we specialize in is republishing books that are out of print, or in-print but not in ebook edition. (We can also do print editions if there's a demand for it, but they are more expensive to produce.)

If folks know of books that they'd like to see republished, I'd be interested to try to acquire them. (The most difficult aspect is typically locating the author or heirs in order to talk to them about the rights. We pay the highest royalty rates of any publisher, so once we connect with the right person, we often can strike a deal.) So if people have favorite books they'd like to see available again, definitely let me know.

Is Fischer's "My 60 Memorable Games" still in print? It was one of the all-time classics.

Why yes, and how cool to run into someone who remembers Nyx!

I've retired from the university, BTW, and have moved on to doing what I enjoy (which, in this case, is helping keep old books alive).

Tartakower's 500 Master Games of chess is in serious need of of a republish (never been done in algebraic notation). Originaly published  by Dover, dunno if there are issues there.

Love my 500 Master Games.

I hope someday it will be converted for all those monolinguists out there. It's a treasure chest.

I have a sofa to sell, is this the place?

I agree with Streetfighter on this one. Seems odd.

Yes, the latest edition is by Batsford publishing from 2008. 

Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games and Tartakower's 500 Master Games of chess are both in print, but neither appear to have ebook editions. (Though Amazon's search feature is sometimes wonky about finding them.) Fischer's was updated to algebraic for the 2008 edition. It would be interesting to update Tartakower's, but there'd be a sizable amount of work involved. (As to the rights situation, if Dover is still working from a 1975 contract, it almost certainly didn't include electronic rights, so the authors would probably still have those available. The authors might control the rights to do an updated edition in any event, so it might be worth us checking on. For Fischer's, a 2008 contract could well have included electronic rights, but I get the sense they didn't do a new contract. So Fischer's heirs might have the ebook rights. The print rights aren't available, since it's in print.)

Of course, an open question is whether folks would find ebook editions of these of any interest? (I've been an ebook guy for over 10 years now so I sometimes forget some folks still prefer paper.) :)

How do your e books work, because there is quite a lot of difference.

There is the electronic version without any chess functionality, then you have for example chess viewer by everyman which is very complex when trying to follow the variations and then a very good approach is e+chess which really works well. What do you call an e-book?

Good question! Underhanded Chess is almost entirely text, so that wasn't an issue for us. It's an ebook like what Amazon or Barnes & Noble sell for Kindles/Nooks/etc. I can definitely see the advantages of adding chess functionality to other titles, however.

The problem I see is that ebook format for Kindle/Nook/etc. -- .MOBI and .EPUB file formats -- won't univerally support interactive features. (The .MOBI format barely supports indented paragraphs! It's terribly primitive.) The new Kindle format supports more features, but there aren't as many Kindle Fires out there. So interactive ebooks would have to be limited to those with an app capable of reading them. (Like the e+ books you mention. I don't know if they would support other publishers using their app; for a price, I imagine! But the question would be whether it's economically feasible.) After a quick look, it appears that e+ books doesn't sell Kindle, Nook, etc. versions; just the in-app purchases...?

So, the best I can say at this point is that the first editions would most easily be non-interactive ebooks, and we'd have to do the interactivivity for a second edition.

Amazon indicates it will be coming out in Feb. 2013. Doesn't say if that's print, ebook, or both.

Out of curiosity (as a question to everyone), if we got rights to some of the out of print books, would you prefer print or ebook?

Personally, i do not believe e books without chess functionality will outlast the ongoing innovations for more than a couple years. A chess amateur that discovers stuff like e+chess would most probably keep his kindle for reading, but put an app on an ipad and really boost his learning and reading speed. Without functionality I have to say that my experience is that paper gives you better overview of the subject, because it is still more handy.

My buying mix is 50-50...

In my opinion the ideal chess e book is not yet on the market. The interaction between board and text can still be improved especially in opening books.

By the way, our most esteemed friend streetfighter has a very good relation with e+chess because they used his book as the initial trial I believe.