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From the first moment (about a year ago) when Mr. Daniel Vanheirzeele from Thinkers Publishing contacted me about the possibility of writing an opening book, I was really excited about the prospect. Writing a chess book was a completely new direction for me, and anything new excites me and gives me a high. Then after some discussion we narrowed the topic down to 1.e4 (\u2018Best by test\u2019) and I found myself with a contract to cover two major variations within the Sicilian: the sharp Najdorf and the trendy Taimanov.<\/p>\n
I actually already had a decent reputation as a dangerous theoretician on the white side of 1.e4, and in particular against these two openings. I had shown some interesting ideas in my games over the years which were the result of my real passion for opening knowledge, a trait which has stayed with me throughout my chess career.<\/p>\n
From a very young age, I had this incurable curiosity about intricacies in the opening. One memorable episode, of which I remain proud even today, occurred when I was 13 years old. I had been watching the game Karjakin \u2013 Anand at Wijk aan Zee 2006, in which Vishy unleashed a fascinating novelty with 24…N<\/span>c7.<\/p>\n After watching that game I was unable to sleep and I began to analyze the crazy, razor-sharp English attack for hours and hours. I found some very interesting ideas and shortly afterward I showed them to my coach GM R.B.Ramesh (a very famous, world-class trainer) in a training session. There were, in total, 20 pages of analysis based upon the game! He was stunned by the level of detail as it was not normal for a thirteen-year-old in those days to create such in-depth analysis (of course now it\u2019s a different story as people regularly become Grandmasters at the age of 13!).<\/p>\n From that time on I\u2019ve been consistently cementing my reputation, especially among my fellow Indian Grandmasters, as an opening expert. I have real insights to impart from the many years of work and so it was a no-brainer for me to seize the opportunity to write a book and share my knowledge with the readers.<\/p>\n The only remaining hurdle was the time factor. Being an active and ambitious player, I had many tournaments lined up on my schedule and was not sure when I could find time to work on this project since it was clear that it would be a sizeable undertaking. Second thoughts crept into my mind at some point, but once I got started on the work, I built up a lot of momentum. In both the openings, I\u2019ve worked tirelessly to find new paths and provide a fresh perspective. ~ GM SP Sethuraman.<\/p>\n Watch the full video below:<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/forwardchess.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/2021-05-16_02-07-47-300x300.jpg\")
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