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The ChessBazaar presents :

The Basman-Sale sicilian defence
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Bc5 !?

## News

10.05.2007 First version of this site .

## Introduction

This opening made a short appearance on the forefront of the chess scene in 1857 when Louis Paulsen decided to rely on it to counter Paul Morphy's 1.e4 in the final match of the first American Chess Congress in New-York.
This resulted in a real disaster for Black (0.5/4) which led to a century-long complete disappearance of the variation from master play.
A first revival happened in the early seventies when british IM Michael Basman unearthed the variation and proved it to be playable at master level.
Then croatian IM Srdjan Sale attached his name to the variation, playing it all along the eighties and nineties, refining both the strategical plans and the varied tactical motifs of this multifacetted defence.
The Basman-Sale is still a rarely played defence, almost never met at grandmaster level.
This looks a bit strange to me as the opening performs as well (or better!) than most reknowned defenses against 1.e4.
Overall results in my ~500 games database are 47% for black : not too bad for an unorthodox defense !
Moreover, those players who took the time to explore the defense more deeply seem to get even better results in return :
IM Sale 65% (39 games)
IM Nestorovic 53% (17 games)
IM Basman 77% (11 games)
I began myself to play this defence in master class correspondence play in the year 2000. Since then my record with it is a good +6 =10 -1 (65%) and it's been three years since my one and only loss happened (due to poor middle game play after having got a nice position at the end of the opening phase!).
Recently GM Vishy Anand played a 90-minute simul against 19 opponents on ICC to raise funds for his favorite charity in
India. I had the opportunity to get a seat and happened to be lucky enough to get the opportunity to play my
favorite Basman-Sale sicilian defence...
... and I won !
Although this is somewhat anecdotical, this surely shows that the best rated player in the world does not know of any evident refutation of this opening system.
So why woudn't you give it a try ?
Marc Lacrosse
10.05.2007

## Games

Here is my selection of human games beginning with 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Bc5 (482 games 1847-04.2007). This database includes all the games that I could find which have been played before 1970 and a careful selection of the best over-the-board and correspondence games afterwards.
After 4..Bc5 the game can go into positions to which other opening move orders can also lead. I added the more significant transpositional games to the "pure" database together with a few online computer and human games played on the ICC and Playchess servers in 2006 and early 2007. This results in a 1687 games database available here. Opening surveys available hereafter were produced on the basis of this broader database.

## Opening surveys

NB : in the following paragraphs, going on any "D" letter with your mouse cursor should pop-up a diagram with the relevant position.
After the initial moves 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Bc5 D White has three main moves : 5.Nb3, 5.Be3 and 5.Nc3.
Less important and not specially promising are 5.Nb5 D (dealt with here) and 5.c3 D (see here). Other moves are weak.
5.Nb3 is by far the most frequently chosen continuation. White immediately stops any attempt at building a Qb6-Bc5 battery by Black. This is not clearly the most promising continuation for White in my opinion. In the most common continuation (5..Bb6 6.Nc3 Ne7 7.Bf4 D see here) White's pressure and threat to occupy the d6 square forces Black to play d5 and after exchanges on d5 we reach a position with a slight plus for white due to the isolated black d5 pawn. Play will then be very positional : both sides have avoided sharp tactical lines and in my opinion black has all chances to equalize or even go for better in case white would try to build an attack without enough sound basis.
In the same 5.Nb3 Bb6 6.Nc3 Ne7 D line , if White does not play 7.Bf4 (see here) the pressure on the d6 square is less important and best play by Black often involves playing f5 which leads to highly original positions after exchange on e4. Black has then some pressure on the f2 square and occupies the center by a timely d7-d5 followed by e5 ... if everything goes well for him! There is lot of place for improvements for both sides in these very volatile lines.
After 5.Nb3 Bb6, 6.Nc3 is white's best move. 6.Bd3 is somewhat passive and leads to some transpositional lines where Black has nothing to fear (here and here). Other 6th moves by white are not better (see here).
5.Be3 is the other way for White to contest Black's intended pressure on the b6-f2 diagonal. After 5..Qb6, the main continuation goes 6.Nc3 Nc6 D (see here). There are quite a few interesting alternatives to 6.Nc3 for white also (see here). In both cases some continuations lead to extremely complex tactical struggles. Other variations are of a more positional nature. Anyway most lines after 5.Be3 require very precise preparation. This is precisely why these lines are not too often seen over the board : few players are adequately prepared from the white side point-of-view while they know that lots of traps could have been prepared by Black. Here also there is a lot of place for improvements over known continuations. I can even say that I am not far from being convinced that a real refutation of the whole Basman-Sale is not far from reach in some of these lines. But so far the relevant continuations have not appeared in any known game ...
5.Nc3 is a good move. After the natural 5..Qb6, 6.Be3 Nc6 transposes to 5.Be3 Qb6 6.Nc3 Nc6 (already seen here).
6.Na4 is the only relevant alternative move for White besides 6.Be3. Then after 6..Qa5 D White can offer a repetition draw with 7.Nc3. Besides acceptation with 7..Qb6, Black may also try to go for plus with 7..Bb4 8.Bd2 Nc6 D which looks a little bit suspect from a positional point-of-view but has had good practical results so far (see here).
After 5.Nc3 Qb6 6.Na4 Qa5 White also has 7.c3 after which play usually proceeds through 7..Bxd4 8.Qxd4 D (see here) which most commonly leads to a somewhat simplified but still interesting position.
The eleven opening reports are available here in zipped PDF.
OK : these reports are nothing more than some kind of sorting of publicly available played games. You could ask : "Where are your own analyses?". Well : these will remain private as long as I play this opening in correspondence competition. So far my own analyses include a litlle more than 4900 lines : I probably can say that there was not a single week along the past six years where I did not try to improve on some former analysis in this opening. But for the very large majority of lines I could not improve in any significant way over the excellent analytical work published by IM V. Bronznik in his book on this opening (see hereafter).

##

## References

There is only one book devoted to the Basman-Sale defence :
"Sizilianisch für Müssiggänger - Die Basman-Sale-Variante" by IM Valeri Bronznik, SchachVerlag Kania 2004.
This is a real top-class opening book, full of intelligent explanations and with a lot of original analytical stuff.
Srdjan Sale himself highly recommends the book In NewInChess Yearbook 73 (pp.40-45 together with some own analyses).
This book has been the subject of a lot of positive comments everywhere on the web like this one by IM Jeremy Silman.
Unfortunately the book is written in german. I hope that there will be a translated and updated edition in the future ...
Srdjan Sale had also published an interesting paper in NIC Yearbook 45 with his early experiences in this defence.
A letter by Manfred Brod in NIC Yearbook 74 (pp 17-19) also deals with some Basman-Sale variation.
Most relevant transpositions with the Basman-Sale are linked to/from lines that are commonly reached through the Kveinys variation move order (4..Qb6 instead of 4..Bc5).
A good but already old reference on this topic is Zoran Ilic's "The Sicilian with ...Qb6", Batsford 1998.

## Files

"Pure" Basman-Sale games in zipped PGN: BasmanSale-pure-05.2007.zip
The same plus transpositions and online games in zipped PGN: BasmanSale-extended-05.2007.zip
Opening reports in zipped PDFs : Basman-Sale-reports-052007.zip
This whole page with all dependencies as a standalone downloadable site : soon to come.

## Final word

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