The Unorthodox. English IM and chess teacher famous for refusing to play normal openings, 1.g4, 1.a3, the St. George Defence, all his children.
Michael Basman was English chess's great eccentric, an IM strong enough to beat grandmasters but uninterested in beating them with normal moves. His repertoire was a parade of openings that no respectable book recommended, 1.g4 (the Grob), 1.a3, 1...a6 (the St. George Defence, immortalized when Tony Miles used it to beat Karpov), 1...h6, 1...g5. He wrote books on every one of them and made a serious case that they were playable. Beyond competitive chess, Basman's legacy was educational. He founded the UK Chess Challenge in 1996, a school competition that has introduced more than a million children to tournament chess. He continued playing and teaching until shortly before his death in 2022.
Notable: Founded the UK Chess Challenge (1996), the largest junior chess tournament in the world. Author of works on 1.g4 and other unorthodox openings. Played top-board for English clubs for over forty years.
| Era | Modern |
| Years | 1946–2022 |
| Peak rating | 2440 |
| Born | London, England, 1946 |
| Title | International Master, two-time British Championship medalist |
| Style | Unorthodox openings, flank attacks, hypermodern provocations, original middlegame plans |
Basman, reconstructed from the player's own games and measured against a modern engine, as a UCI engine for your machine: it runs locally and offline, loads into CZUBATRONIC 2400 as an external engine, and into any compatible UCI chess interface. Strong chess from the engine; the choices, recognisably Basman's.
| File | ChessGate_Basman.exe · 25 MB |
| Runs in | CZUBATRONIC 2400 (as an external engine) and any UCI chess interface |
| Requirements | Windows 10 / 11, 64-bit; any UCI chess interface; CZUBATRONIC 2400 lists it as an external engine |
| Works offline | Yes. No account, no server. |
| Packs | — |
| Collection | Complete Personality Collection |
| In the browser | A lighter version of Basman plays on ChessGate. |
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