Writing an opening book has been on my mind for quite some years and I’m thankful to TP-team for giving me this opportunity. In the first quarter of 2019 I came to an agreement with TP about this project and it took me more than a year to produce the book you are holding in your hands. I already had quite a lot of experience writing opening articles, starting in January 2009 with ChessVibes Openings and still do regularly write for several other (online) publishers. But that’s nothing compared with writing an entire book on one of the most popular and heavily analysed openings. For me the personal challenge was basically whether I would be able to show something new on a topic a lot has been written about in chess literature and frankly, I’m very happy to have accomplished that task.
It must have been somewhere at the beginning of this century, when games started to be broadcast online, that my love for the Sveshnikov was shaped. I got very much inspired by top players like Vladimir Kramnik, Peter Leko, Alexey Shirov, Boris Gelfand and not in the last place my fellow-countryman Loek van Wely (thanks for the foreword!), who all had excellent results and contributed to the development of this opening. At first, you start wondering why Black weakens the d5-square (5…e5) and then step by step you realize the dynamic potential of Black’s opening strategy. The ensuing positions contain a lot of imbalances, which makes it a very attractive opening to play for a win at any level.
