"U cannot be serious!" by IM Gerard Welling and IM Michael Basman

A wonderful new book about Mike Basman's chess will be released at the beginning of April 2021! (And this is not an April Fools Joke 😉)

Two of the most esteemed chess players in the world of Unorthodox Chess Openings combined their efforts to produce the FINAL word on Basman's unusual openings.

A new book with 304 pages!

A real labour of love.

Content

004 Symbols and bibliography

006 Contents

007 Introduction

011 Chapter 1 Basmania in Biel

047 Chapter 2 Basmania in Belgium

061 Chapter 3 St. George’s Opening with Black and White

099 Chapter 4 Grob’s Inheritance

161 Chapter 5 Global Opening Play

217 Chapter 6 Basmania for the 21st Century

293 Chapter 7 Outro

299 Index Games

Here you can read a detailed description and a 18 pages sample as well!

I can't wait to read the whole book!

Dec. 2019: A new repertoire book by IM Gerard Welling and FM Steve Giddins!

According to Amazon there's an upcoming new book, to be published on Dec. 20th 2019 by IM Gerard Welling and FM Steve Giddins!

The title is:
"Side-stepping Mainline Theory: Cut Down on Chess Opening Study and Get a Middlegame You are Familiar With"

And this is the description of it:
"The average chess player spends too much time on studying opening theory. In his day, World Champion Emanuel Lasker argued that improving amateurs should spend about 5% of their study time on openings. These days club players are probably closer to 80%, often focusing on opening lines that are popular among grandmasters. Club players shouldn't slavishly copy the choices of grandmasters. GMs need to squeeze every drop of advantage from the opening and therefore play highly complex lines that require large amounts of memorization. The main necessity for club players is to emerge from the opening with a reasonable position, from which you can simply play chess and pit your own tactical and positional understanding against that of your opponent. Gerard Welling and Steve Giddins recommend the Old Indian-Hanham Philidor set-up as a basis for both Black and White. They provide ideas and strategies that can be learned in the shortest possible time and require the bare minimum of maintenance and updating. They deliver exactly what you need: rock-solid positions that you know how to handle. By adopting a similar set-up for both colours, with similar plans and techniques, you further reduce study time. With this compact and straightforward opening approach, Welling and Giddins argue, club players will have more time to focus on what is really decisive in the vast majority of non-grandmaster games: tactics, positional understanding and endgame technique."

A BIG Thank You

We wrote it a few years ago, we want to write it again: a BIG THANK YOU to IM Gerard Welling for being such a great source of chess inspiration for this blog.

Is your spoon long enough? IM Welling in action

FM Steve Giddins shows a hilarious miniature game from the 2011 Bad Wiessee tournament.  IM Gerard Welling
in action against 1.b4 when the creative Dutch IM played 1...Na6 ...here's the game..

https://www.youtube.com/user/SteveGchess  

 IM Gerard Welling 

Source http://hmccalder.blogspot.it/2005/08/portrettenserie-deel-2-gerard-welling.html

Riff J. N. - Welling G 0-1 Pfalz Open 2015

IM Welling recent & nice win against GM Riff at the Pfalz Open

Appreciation

I want to thank IM Gerard Welling for being such a great source of chess inspiration for the blog.

De Firmian - Welling; Oslo Chess International 2011

A nice win by IM Gerard Welling who had a 2507 Elo performance rating in Oslo 2011!

Old...but not forgotten: "The Stonewall Attack" by GM Andrew Soltis

A lot of chess players are looking for a repertoire to play as White. This opening system should be easy to learn and with a low level of maintenance. If this is the case, you should consider the possibily to purchase Soltis' book "The Stonewall Attack".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_Attack

The system consists of playing 1.d4 2.e3 with f4 to follow but different move orders are possible.    

This is what Soltis writes on pages 8 and 9 of his book.            

In order to show you that from the Stonewall Attack can arise exciting games, here you can see a nice game played by Gerard Welling before the publication of Soltis' book:

IM Bosboom's creative chess

During the recent Dutch Championship, Gerard Welling met the extremely creative IM Manuel Bosboom who played (and won !) a side event. He showed Welling a nice little game he played in a Amsterdam chesscafé, 3 minutes chess, 3 or 4 years ago. An amazing example of an active double rook sacrifice. Welling thought we may have liked to see it, so he wrote the moves down, checked the notation with Bosboom and..here it is for our pleasure.

My thanks to Gerard Welling for his kind contribution.

Free chess spirits

A few minutes ago I was thinking to the open  minded chess players who are willing to explore new paths. I am grateful to Mike Basman, Gerard Welling, Philip du Chattel, Stefan Buecker, Mike Surtees just to name a few...and at the same time the thought flew to Jonathan Livingston Seagull....So glad that they exist...
UPDATED SEPT. 3rd 2011

Cebalo - Welling, Bratto 2010 -> an exciting draw!

When the game was played, GM Cebalo was the reigning World Senior Champion.
The move 21..c5 is a key moment, and Black intended to answer 22.dxc6 ep with ..Rxa2! The reader
can sort out his opinion on the position and game. For me, this is an EXCELLENT game.

IM Welling thoughts on Lasker's fighting chess

IM Gerard Welling has just sent me his thoughts on Emanuel Lasker's fighting chess by presenting the Lasker-Euwe games in a small article. FM Steve Giddins has offered his welcome help in putting it in a nice typesetting for us (BCM standard). I want to thank both of them for their work. Even nowadays Emanuel Lasker's games deserve serious study.
This is the download link http://hotfile.com/dl/110930945/48cbd92/lasker.pdf.html