We remember IM Michael Basman who passed away on October 26th, 2022

Mike attended The University of Leeds as an undergraduate reading history.

Here is Mike’s wikipedia entry

Here are his games

An interesting article from chess.com

Confessions of a Crooked Chess Master – Part 1 from Kingpin

Confessions of a Crooked Chess Master – Part 2

From Chessgames.com :

“Michael John Basman was born in St Pancras, London, England. He was awarded the IM title in 1980 and having dual nationality won the Erevan Championship whilst living there in the early 1970s. He was also a pioneer in the production of audio tapes for chess.

He is noted for his use of unorthodox flank openings, such as 1.g4, 1.h3, 1.e4 g5, etc. He expanded on the work of Henri Grob with his book on the topic of 1.g4, The Killer Grob.

He created the UK Chess Challenge, a tournament for juniors of all standards and ages progressing over four stages.(1)”

MJB won the ECF President’s Award in 2013.

Mike recently received a “bursary” from FIDE as a tribute towards FIDEs more senior players.