a couple of points-basman was a very strong player who handicapped himself with miserable openings because he thought he had a poor memory-i always feared he wd play a normal opening against me and on the rare occasions when he did he once beat me and also came close the other time

fritz is just plain wrong-7Qb3 and 7Bd2 both leave white worse-fritz doesnt "understand" such positions with a very long term strategic disability

i think basman beat both speelman and nunn with his weird opening-this can be checked

It is a fantastic book, Ray! Truly: I've been absorbing the ideas that you both have been espousing as Petrosian's intention in the given position; and it has been helping me in sharpening my tactical and strategic vision.

What is your take on Petrosian personally? Yasser Seirawan once told me a story where he was in the back room of tournament playing hall in the US and out of nowhere Petrosian and Smyslov come in and start kibitzing.

Petrosian sits down and plays Seirawan and Seirawan proceeds to beat him in 4 straight games - after each game Petrosian getting more and more steamed at the situation and Seirawan in awe wanting to leave the table, but Petrosian not letting him.

Finally after those four games, Petrosian went on to win four straight and that's when they finally stopped playing blitz.

Do you have any special memories of having played/met the man?

Would you consider taking this idea to the BBC and seeing if they're interested in it?

re petrosian-i was playing kovacevic at amsterdam 1973 -the game is here on chessgames.com-i sac'd a rook on a7 just as Petrosian came into the room-he kind of jumped back and later asked me to annotate it for 64 magazine which he edited

not in any particular order

petrosian 1-0 v fischer cands 1971

petrosian 1-0 v botvinnik wcc 1963 game 5

petrosian 1-0 v spassky wcc 1966 game 10

spassky o-1 v petrosian game 7 wcc 1966

spassky 0-1 v petrosian wcc 1969 game game 13 ( i think)

keres 0-1 v petrosian cands 1959

petrosian v smyslov 1961 ussr champ 1-0

petrosian 1-0 v korchnoi cands 1971

petrosian 1-0 v spassky wcc 1969 moscow game 20

petrosian 1-0 v tal cands 1962

larsen 0-1 v petrosian havana olympiad 1966

kasparov 0-1 v petrosian tilburg 1980

petrosian was-like nimzowitsch-an artist -his best games are truly remarkable

While I agree that the Grob is objectively a dubious opening at best, it has plenty of surprise value which can easily ensnare a careless player in the opening.

Savielly Tartakower wrote <"A remarkable feature of Staunton's play is the number of ultra-modern ideas with which he was familiar, e.g. the restricted centre, the fianchetto development, bilateral work, the theory of the local engagement, etc., and, last but not least, the English Opening (sometimes called the Staunton Opening).> Dr. Savielly Tartakower and J. du Mont, <500 Master Games of Chess (1975)>, p. 626.

As you say, the database is not an accurate record of all games played. It tends to include mostly strong players, and as strong players generally avoid the grob, that is one skew on the results.

I suspect also that the grob will be wheeled out by players when playing someone weaker than themselves. Which again will skew the results.

Then we have the science of small numbers. The sample size of these fringe openings is much too small to be representative.

We can also get weird results when a variation is suddenly discredited. Imagine an opening which is played for a hundred years with fairly good results for white. Then someone discovers a refutation and after a few convincing black wins, no-one ever plays that variation again. The database would show a healthy evaluation for that opening on account of all the old white wins. Doesn't mean that the variation is worth playing.

Fritz (and all chess engines) don't have any sense of "understanding" of a position, but they are good at crunching tactics. So while I wouldn't trust their strategical nous, I would trust them when they say that Mike lost this game largely through tactical mistakes.

True, he made those tactical mistakes because you put him under a lot of pressure and you played well against a dubious opening. But Fritz's tactical analysis (which we can trust) is saying that with best play white would not have gone down in flames in the way that he did.

As to the weaknesses of the grob never being fully masked ... only if white castles kingside. In many openings, white castles queenside and throws his kingside pawns forward with moves like g4. And in situations like that g4 is an attacking move and not a structural weakness.

I wish you all the success with getting Chess back on TV and with your upcoming literary releases!

Thank you very much, Ray.

LTJ

PS. Thank you also for sharing that excellent Petrosian story. That's amazing!