In article ,
"Chess One" wrote:

During the two days in Basman's house I showed him all my analysis of
1.g4 Basman had never seen it played before and thought it lost by
force. After two days I was able to convince him that the opening was
playable.

Basman was already an International Master. He never played the Grob
before I showed it to him. He started playing it the next year, in
1979. You can check that out.

However, Basman deserves full credit for inventing the Borg 1. e4 g5.
I would never have dreamed to play that. I have tried it a few times
since with very poor results.


Make fun of this opening if you choose, but you will be assimilated.
Resistance is futile.

--Harold Buck


"I used to rock and roll all night,
and party every day.
Then it was every other day. . . ."
-Homer J. Simpson

On Sat, 17 Apr 2004 10:56:19 GMT, "Chess One"
wrote:

Sam, thanks for the corrections - I thought he had played it earlier, and
should have checked since I have his book here somewhere. I find that 1...
g5 works better after 1.c4 perhaps because the critical square c3 cannot now
be occupied by a pawn. And I note Bas jokes in his book that it is now a
forced win for black. Did you base your own Grob on Bloodgood or anyone in
particular? BillWall? Or did you devise it as a mirrored Sokolski?

Cordially, Phil

I was interviewed in this question a few weeks ago. I started playing
1.g4 because of a book entitled "The Blue Book of Charts to Winning
Chess". This book was based on a database the author had compiled of
50,000 published games. For each move he gave white's winning
percentage. He found that with 1.e4 White won 59% of the time, with
1.d4 White won 58% with 1.b4 White won 49% and with 1.g4 White won 77%
!!!!

I decided that this seemed to be a valid idea and to test it. I played
1.g4 in every game in the 1976 World Open and sure enough I scored 75%
.. My only loss was to Danny Kopec who was rated 300 points higher than
me. I have played nothing else since.

All the lines I play were invented by me. The games in The Blue Book
of Charts to Winning Chess did help some. For example those games
showed that after 1. g4 d5 2. Bg2 c6 3. h3 e5 4. c4 White loses after
4. ... dxc4. Therefore, I have never played 4. c4 in that position.

It was not until many years later that I obtained the books by Grob
and Bloodgood. I found those books to be useless to me because their
opponents were all weak players. Most of the opponents were all Class
B and Class C players. Not one game was against a master in either
book. By that time, I had defeated many masters with 1.g4 and so the
books by Grob and Basman were useless to me.

I still have never seen Bill Wall's book but I am sure that it must be
much better.

Sam Sloan

I was interviewed in this question a few weeks ago. I started playing
1.g4 because of a book entitled "The Blue Book of Charts to Winning
Chess". This book was based on a database the author had compiled of
50,000 published games. For each move he gave white's winning
percentage. He found that with 1.e4 White won 59% of the time, with
1.d4 White won 58% with 1.b4 White won 49% and with 1.g4 White won 77%
!!!!

I decided that this seemed to be a valid idea and to test it. I played
1.g4 in every game in the 1976 World Open and sure enough I scored 75%
. My only loss was to Danny Kopec who was rated 300 points higher than
me. I have played nothing else since.

All the lines I play were invented by me. The games in The Blue Book
of Charts to Winning Chess did help some. For example those games
showed that after 1. g4 d5 2. Bg2 c6 3. h3 e5 4. c4 White loses after
4. ... dxc4. Therefore, I have never played 4. c4 in that position.

It was not until many years later that I obtained the books by Grob
and Bloodgood. I found those books to be useless to me because their
opponents were all weak players. Most of the opponents were all Class
B and Class C players. Not one game was against a master in either
book. By that time, I had defeated many masters with 1.g4 and so the
books by Grob and Basman were useless to me.

I still have never seen Bill Wall's book but I am sure that it must be
much better.

I have it here in front of me. ISBN 0-931462-86-X

Bill gives the lines names, for example after your 1. g4 d5 2. Bg2 c6

He gives the main line as 3. c4, and
a) 3 g5 The Spike
b) 3 h3 The Short Spike
c) e4 [un-named]

and follows by illustrative openings by Grob-Bischoff, Grob-Spielraum,
Bloodgood- H. Evans, Grob-Denring, W Clark-K Jones, Grob - Silberring,
Bloodgood-Meyerhofer, Grob-Branner, Gron-Wild, Bloodgood-Lweis,
Fewell-Phillips, Grob-Roesler, Bloodgood-Lundy, Dubini - F. Larsen,
Dubini-Pannullo /just for those lines/; earliest dated game is 1958, latest
1981, from pages 64-66 of an 84 page booklet.

O! I note that I have stolen this book from The Reverend Philip Gustafson
It was Published by Chess Enterprises in 1988
Coraopolis, PA.
Publisher is B.G. Dudley
Copyright 1988

The games index offers a few 'names' like Basman-Keene, and Basman-Miles,
Duckworth-McCambridge, Koltanowski-Love, but is not complete, and looking at
the games themselves there is also Basman-Botterill, a number of Indian
players, and Krnic-Ermenkov, Graz 1982, for example.

I think this is as good or a better book than Basman's for game scores, but
has much less commentary and annotation - but why don't you write a more
comprehensive one?

Bill Wall incidentally makes his Acknowledgements to: Ray Alexis, Frank
Cunliffe and Bob Dudley for material contributions, and to Geoffrey
McCauliffe and Val Zemitis for other assistance. Perhaps you will have
encountered some of these folks?

Bill uses as reference, Basman, J. Benjamin & E. Schiller, Bloodgood, Dubini
R. ("1.g4" L'Arcimatto, 12/81 & 2/82), Euwe, M (Grob-Flankenspiel), Ganzo
J., Grob, Harding (Dallas), Matanovic, Welling G (Grob's Attack In Practice,
1981)

Cordially, Phil

Sam Sloan

On Sat, 17 Apr 2004 15:24:05 GMT, "Chess One"
wrote:

I was interviewed in this question a few weeks ago. I started playing
1.g4 because of a book entitled "The Blue Book of Charts to Winning
Chess". This book was based on a database the author had compiled of
50,000 published games. For each move he gave white's winning
percentage. He found that with 1.e4 White won 59% of the time, with
1.d4 White won 58% with 1.b4 White won 49% and with 1.g4 White won 77%
!!!!

I decided that this seemed to be a valid idea and to test it. I played
1.g4 in every game in the 1976 World Open and sure enough I scored 75%
. My only loss was to Danny Kopec who was rated 300 points higher than
me. I have played nothing else since.

All the lines I play were invented by me. The games in The Blue Book
of Charts to Winning Chess did help some. For example those games
showed that after 1. g4 d5 2. Bg2 c6 3. h3 e5 4. c4 White loses after
4. ... dxc4. Therefore, I have never played 4. c4 in that position.

It was not until many years later that I obtained the books by Grob
and Bloodgood. I found those books to be useless to me because their
opponents were all weak players. Most of the opponents were all Class
B and Class C players. Not one game was against a master in either
book. By that time, I had defeated many masters with 1.g4 and so the
books by Grob and Basman were useless to me.

I still have never seen Bill Wall's book but I am sure that it must be
much better.

I have it here in front of me. ISBN 0-931462-86-X

Bill gives the lines names, for example after your 1. g4 d5 2. Bg2 c6

He gives the main line as 3. c4, and
a) 3 g5 The Spike
b) 3 h3 The Short Spike
c) e4 [un-named]


Thank you very much. I play 3. h3, which he calls the Short Spike. I
have never played 3. g5 as I do not see a good reply to 3. .... h6
following which Black opens his rook file. I also never play 3. c4 as
that is followed by 3. .... dxc4 with no compensation. Actually, I
played 3. c4 by mistake once because I fell asleep and mixed up the
lines. I got a very bad position but won anyway due to weak play by
opponent.

Sam Sloan

However, Basman deserves full credit for inventing the Borg 1. e4 g5.
I would never have dreamed to play that.


Okay -- Basman gets all the blame for 1....g5, then.

Didn't Anand try a ...g5 in a variation of the Petroff against of all
people Kasparov? Maybe the shock value is whats important. Then
again no one is playing that goofy line anymore.

EZoto

..
Didn't Anand try a ...g5 in a variation of the Petroff against of all
people Kasparov? Maybe the shock value is whats important. Then
again no one is playing that goofy line anymore.


Sounds reasonable to me -- if Anand wins, it is because he is a highly
"original" genius. And if he loses, it must be because he is playing Kasparov.
Plus Garry wil sit there for half an hour, trying to recall his in-depth,
pre-game preparation for that line. :-)


Sam Sloan insists that he doesn't play 4.g5, because he can't think of a good
move after 4....h6, threatening to open the h-file for Black's Rook. Yet,
despite the fact that I have never once played the Grob (unless you count
offhand, blitz games), I have no trouble at all coming up with a good reply,
even blindfolded (which is to say, I am definitely NOT using a chessboard):
5.g6?!! fg!?? 6.Bd3?!!? ...Bf5!??! 7.Bxf5!?!^! ...gxf5 (forced), 8.e4!?!?
And now: ...fxe4??! 9.Qh5+, etc. / Or if ...dxe4, there could follow 9.Qh5+
....Kd7, 10. Qxf5+, etc., with "reasonable" compensation. In other words, what
is "reasonable" depends on the player -- and any player who likes the Grob....
:-)



BTW, I am fully aware that Fritz can easily refute all my analysis here, but
that is beside the point, for he *is* using a chessboard, while I am not. Try
smearing PB&J all over your Fritz install disk, and then let him compete with
my unrivalled blindfold analysis skills.... :-)

At 12:25 AM 4/17/2004 -0400, John Fernandez wrote:

I find this very funny, and rather typical Sloanian "logic". Anna Hahn is
not a strong player, no matter what, according to you. If Jenn Shahade has
a great tournament, that is because she is a strong player. If Anna Hahn
does it, it is because she is lucky. So basically no matter what, those 5
women on the training squad are always better, even when they get beaten by
Anna Hahn, who is just lucky and has no business playing chess anymore.
Thank you for correcting me on this, Sam. Yeesh.

I never said that Anna Hahn was not a strong player. She is a strong
player. You are a strong player. I am a strong player. We are all
strong players.

But everything is relative. Dashze Sharavdorj is a weak player, a weak
GM. Compared to most GMs he is a weak player. His USCF rating after
this tournament will be 2480. That makes him weaker than almost every
other GM. He is still strong compare to you and me, however.

Anna Hahn had a good tournament, a very good tournament, her best
tournament in years. However, if Zsuzsa Polgar or Joel Benjamin had
had the same tournament it would have been terrible, a disaster.

I just calculated this. Her average opponent was rated 2334. She
scored 50% so her performance rating for the event was 2334. This was
not good enough to put her on the team and this was her best result in
many years.

And none of the women other than Polgar have ever hit 2500. So, uh, drop it.

Goletiani played a stronger field than Anna Hahn at Foxwoods. Five of
the opponents of Goletiani were GMs and IMs.

Five of my opponents were GMs and IMs, too. Does that mean I'm as strong as
Goletiani?

I did not know that you had had a sex change operation. We should both
do that. Then we can both play on the Woman's Olympiad team. However,
I will have to work on and improve my Diamiano's and Spike first, so I
can get my rating up.

She drew GM Gildardo
Garcia, rated 2537. We know that Goletiani and Shahade can handle that
level of competition. They have done so many times. Just one win by
Anna Hahn is not enough to demonstrate that she is ready for the US
team especially since most of her opponents at the Olympiad will be
rated over 2400 and she will need to win most of those games for the
US to win a medal.

So Goletiani drawing a GM proves that she's stronger than Anna Hahn, who
beat a GM? It's not like it was her first GM win ever. Yeesh.

Are you sure about that? Can you name another GM that Anna Hahn has
ever defeated? I can name many GMs that Goletiani has defeated. I have
them in my database.

Also by the way, does anybody know how Dashze Sharavdorj got the GM
title? His highest FIDE rating has been 2411. Is he really a GM?

You have the research skills of a mountain goat. Sharavorj's CURRENT FIDE
rating is 2444. His all time high is 2505.

OK. I will give you the point that apparently you too have realized
that under the rules as presently written Anna Hahn has not yet
qualified for the 2005 US Championship. I agree that they will
probably let her play anyway, to avoid further controversy, especially
since this entire problem arose because the AF4C was not able to hold
the 2004 US Championship on schedule.

Sam Sloan

I'm not talking about the rules. I'm talking about the fact that the AF4C
has confirmed that Hahn is already qualified for the 2005 US Championship.
It has nothing to do with controversy. It's because she's earned it.

John Fernandez

Anna Hahn earned the right to play in the 2004 US Championship. That
will be held in June, 2004. The winner of that tournament earns the
right to play in the 2005 US Championship. Of course, of AF4C is
willing to pay the money so that both the 2003 US Woman's Champion and
the 2004 US Woman's Champion are allowed to play in the 2005
Championship, then I am sure that the USCF will not object. However,
are you certain that AF4C has agreed to this??

Sam Sloan

Sam Sloan wrote:
I never said that Anna Hahn was not a strong player. She is a strong
player. You are a strong player. I am a strong player. We are all
strong players.

I'm not./python


Dave.

--
David Richerby Frozen Radio (TM): it's like a radio
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ but it's frozen in a block of ice!

At 10:27 PM 4/17/2004 -0000, chessparrott wrote:
I don't have the games in handy format but the first was played on
25th May 1979 in Basingstoke, Hampshire, where coincidentally I now
live, right in the college that I work in today.

His 1. g4 win over Nunn is in The Killer Grob (Pergamon Press).

The MOB you need is #12. Hugh may still have it for sale.

Thank you very much. That confirms my recollection that Basman started
playing 1.g4 about one year after I first showed my analysis to him.

At the same time, Basman plays it differently than I do. My system is
more aggressive than his.

Sam Sloan

BTW, I am fully aware that Fritz can easily refute all my analysis here, but
that is beside the point, for he *is* using a chessboard, while I am not. Try
smearing PB&J all over your Fritz install disk, and then let him compete with
my unrivalled blindfold analysis skills.... :-)


You got a point there. I'd like to see someone play g4 against Fritz
or CM. You get a lost position by force.

EZoto