1. Visiting Chessgames is part of my daily routine and I often drop in when taking a short break. I'm always busy, but can't work non-stop all day :-) I'm taking over as editor of www.chesscountry.com, but I expect to continue to visit here on most days. It is the best chess community on the Internet, despite some squabbling about Fischer and Topalov and Kramnik.

2. Yes, it is bad in the US. We have very few high quality tournaments and when there are large prizes the competition is brutal. Even famous players sometimes walk away with less than $100 in prizes, after bearing all of the costs of the event themselves. That's why players have to teach and write and do other things to make a living.

3. I wrote a lot about Kasparov in my "Learn from Garry Kasparov's Greatest Games". I've always enjoyed being with Kasparov, it is always interesting. He has a great knowledge of history and Russian politics, and even when I argue with him on politics, we have a lot of fun. I saw him most recently last weekend in Chicago, but he was very busy signing autographs so didn't have time to talk much. At the same time, I have to admit that he can be difficult and he doesn't believe in hiding his opinions, so he can come across as a little arrogant. But as geniuses go, he's fairly normal in person and nothing like the way he's often portrayed by his critcs. He's very good with kids, too.

http://www.chesscountry.com/

I notice, however, that there is no discussion in any of these volumes regarding the Saragossa Opening (1.c3). While this opening is completely out of favor with the top ranked players, it does appear to provide some success with lower rated players (ie., below 2500). I did a SCID analysis of the opening with my database of over 2000000 games and found that it had a score of 54.4% across all games (found a total of 662 games with this position). Of course, some of these games transposed into other openings. I have used the opening in online correspondence play and have had some success against higher rated players.

I am a Caro-Kann player with black and it seems to provide some similarities when playing white. I also like the Colle System, and find it can easily transpose into the Colle. It also can easily transpose into the Exchange Variation of the QGD.

<Thank you, Anthony, for your time, and your interesting opinions.> <<Ah, no sweat – this was great. Now that I’ve got two capital letters in front of my name, people all of a sudden care about what I (or is it the letters?) have to say.>>

I've been the butt of various jokes over the year, and don't mind when it is all in fun and designed to amuse, rather than hurt. The cover of "Not the BCM" was unflattering, but it was my own fault for being so obese at the time. But the point of that was to be funny, and it was. But there is nothing funny about this April Fool's "joike", which is just part of their relentless campaign against me.

Meanwhile, if you want to see my books, go to stores like Barnes & Noble or online at Amazon or a responsible chess dealer like the London Chess Center (Chess4Less). I'm sure that some of them can help you become a better players, including my book on Spielmann's games which is being reissued in an expanded version by Hardinge Simpole, who are also boycotted by the Chess Cafe even though they mostly republish books that have withstood the test of time. Visit them at http://www.hardingesimpole.co.uk/ and decide for yourself whether the Chess Cafe boycott is justified.