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UNORTHODOX OPENING HEROES by Clyde Nakamura Michael J. Basman “Every worm has
to turn and every mouse must bite the elephant." A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY Michael J. Basman (born in 1946 at St Pancras, London, England) is an English chess player, and International Master, who is a prolific writer, chess teacher, chess coach and an organizer who has made many contributions to the field of unorthodox flank chess openings (such as 1.g4, 1.h3, 1.e4 g5, etc.).Basman is known for frequently choosing bizarre or rarely played openings in his own games, including the St. George Defence (with which English Grandmaster Tony Miles once famously defeated the then World Champion Anatoly Karpov), and the Grob (for Black and White).He first started playing chess at the age of ten and was a very talented junior player. Basman’s father was an Armenian immigrant who is said to have changed the family name from Basmadjian to Basman. Basman lived in Erevan, Armenia in the early 1970’s and having dual citizenship won the Erevan Championship. In the twentieth century Armenia was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union and Erevan was its capitol city. For more information on Erevan see this web link. At the Student Olympiad 1967 at Harrowchow, Czechoslovakia, the English team won the bronze medal and beat the USSR 3-1. The English team consisted mostly of Oxford and Cambridge players but a key member was the highly talented and unorthodox Michael Basman who won the decisive game from a dubious position against Vladimir Savon. Vladimir Savon went on to win the Soviet Championship in 1971. His greatest tournament success was tying for first place in the 1973 British Championships but lost the play-off match to William Hartston. Basman was awarded the IM (International Master) title in 1980. Basman has competed in international events throughout the world. This has included the World Team Championship Under 18, World Team Championship Under 26, Hastings, Loyds Banks, Netanya (Israel), Biel (Switzerland), Lugano (Switzerland) and other Masters tournaments such as the British Chess Federation Championships. His list of opponents has included some famous names in chess such as Tal, Botvinnik, Leonid Stein, Gligoric, Jan Timman, Stefan Buecker, Eric Schiller and others. Since his years as an international
master, Michael Basman has devoted his time to teaching schoolchildren
chess, and organizing the yearly UK Chess Challenge, a chess tournament
which is said to have 70,000 young players. He was also a pioneer in
the production of audio tapes for chess. CHESS OPENINGS PLAYED
1.a3 e5 2.h3 d5
(White side)
I saw the following comment about the Creepy Crawly Opening at this internet site:
Listed below is a link to this unusual Sicilian Defense Line. There are 1,687 Basman-Sale Sicilian games that you can download from this web site. There is also the history and the development of this Sicilian Defense line. Orangutan Opening 1.b4 (There was only one game played with this opening in Basman’s Database of chess games). However some of his games with 1.a3 did transpose into some form of the Orangutan Opening. The Fred/Duras Gambit 1.e4 f5 Someone (on the internet) said he played Michael Basman a blitz game and was embarrassed by 1.e4 f5 The Fred/Duras Gambit. Birds Opening 1.f4 Smith Morra Gambit 1.e4 c5 2.d4 cxd4 3.c3 Kings Gambit 1.e4 e5 2.f4 Whenever I
check my database of Basman’s chess games, I am sill very surprised to find
some unusual lines even in the games with regular orthodox chess openings
that Basman had played. CHESS BOOKS PUBLISHED Listed below is a list of chess books that were written by Michael J. Basman, however whenever I check the internet there appears to be more books by Michael J. Basman. The listing below is the most recent listing that I have found on the internet. Some of these books may actually be out of print but you could possibly get a used copy on Amazon.com or some other Internet web sites:
CONCLUSION Basman will be forever remembered for his contributions to Unorthodox Flank Openings (such as 1.g4, 1.h3, 1.e4 g5, etc.) Also he expanded on Henry Grob’s original work on the Grob Attack (1.g4) with his book on the “The Killer Grob”. I believe Michael J. Basman could have easily become a Grandmaster if he had chosen to do so. But his devotion to teaching and coaching chess to young chess players had prevented him from becoming a Grandmaster. I saw some comments about Basman on the internet site Everything2.com. Two of those comments are listed below:
I have included a chess database of 743
games and lines of Michael J. Basman with this article. It is a file
called Basman1.zip which when unzipped becomes a pgn file. REFERENCES Wikipedia
Article on Michael Basman Chess Games.Com - 239
Basman games that can be viewed online on the internet Creepy Crawly Opening
St George Defense
The Grobs Attack Sicilian Defense – Basman-Sale Variation - http://users.skynet.be/mlcc/chessbazaar/basmansale/index.html
Unorthodox Chess Openings
Newsgroups Messages Unorthodox Chess Openings Newsgroups File Section Basman Sicilian.zip Basman.cbv Basman.zip
Basman1.zip _______________________________________________________________________ Copyright 2008 Clyde Nakamura. All rights reserved. _______________________________________________________________________
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