Descripción

 

U Cannot Be Serious – Avant-Garde Strategy in Chess Modern chess is getting to be more and

more a young man’s game. Over the last decades, with the growth of internet and the development of

chess engines, high quality chess material has becomereadily available. And the young generation

knows how to put these opportunities into effect, the result being a much larger pool of strong

players than the aged authors have ever witnessed in their respective primes.

 

Openings are researched and tested with the strongest computer programs; this has led to a revival of

concrete evaluation of positions and the good old intuition being pushed towards the background.

Contemporary chess is lively and we see experimental approaches, but in general backed up with

accurate calculation.

U Cannot Be Serious – Avant-Garde Strategy in Chess

 

What will this book present you? First of all a more elaborate picture of Michael Basman’s chess,

based on my experiences with this creative master. We played together in two early tournaments

around 1980, and (especially in the second one) we discussed the ideas which has given me a clearer

idea of the man’s way of chess thinking than before – because the multiple outright rejections in the

past and on the net are clear proof that it is not so easy to understand new and creative ideas. These

two tournaments, the Biel Masters in 1979 and the Liege Open in 1981 will be presented in separate

reports of the events, focusing on the games of the hero of this book, from my point of view.

 

This book is about co-author and international master Michael Basman, who has been an avant-

garde strategist on the chessboard from his early days as a tournament player and who has collected

his share of ridicule and scorn throughout the years. But he has been fairly successful, so we can ask

ourselves who has been right, the master or his critics. Former world champion Mikhail Botvinnik

saw through the facade of experimental play and named Basman a creative and talented player. But

even on the British player’s home turf, there was often sharp rejection of his way of playing chess.

Interesting wins were more than once described as lucky, and losses as the natural consequence of

sins against chess. Even in the late 1970s, when Mike Basman was a household name in British chess,

British Chess Magazine was still writing he was ‘handicapping’ himself by his unfortunate opening

choices.

 

Sample Pages