Albin Planinc, the third wild man

Dennis Monokroussos writes: In the 1970s, Yugoslavian chess featured at least three wild men: Ljubomir Ljubojevic, Dragoljub Velimirovic, and Albin Planinc. The first was one of the world's best players for over a decade, the second is also pretty well-known thanks not just to his games but the variation of the 6.Bc4 Sozin involving queenside castling, but the third, Planinc, is almost completely unknown nowadays. And that's a pity, because the brilliant, razor-sharp chess he played in his prime would make him a fan favorite today.

So this week, we'll take a first step in remedying this, as we examine his 1975 game with Dragoljub Minic from Rovinj/Zagreb tournament. Neither player had a good event, but their game was a real donnybrook with sacrifices, counter-sacrifices and all sorts of fascinating material imbalances. For most of the game, the position was completely unclear, but eventually Planinc's brilliant handling of the complications led to a fatal Minic error and our star brought home the point.

It was a great game, and as a bonus, a theoretically significant game as well, at least for those who play or allow the Archangelsk Variation of the Ruy. So nuke some popcorn and gather around your flat panels or CRTs this Monday for another great game – hope to see you then!

Dennis Monokroussos is 38, lives in South Bend, IN (the site of the University of Notre Dame), and is writing a Ph.D. dissertation in philosophy (in the philosophy of mind) while adjuncting at the University.

He is fairly inactive as a player right now, spending most of his non-philosophy time being a husband and teaching chess. At one time he was one of the strongest juniors in the U.S., but quit for about eight years starting in his early 20s. His highest rating was 2434 USCF, but he has now fallen to the low-mid 2300s – "too much blitz, too little tournament chess", he says.

Dennis has been working as a chess teacher for seven years now, giving lessons to adults and kids both in person and on the internet, worked for a number of years for New York’s Chess In The Schools program, where he was one of the coaches of the 1997-8 US K-8 championship team from the Bronx, and was very active in working with many of CITS’s most talented juniors.

When Dennis Monokroussos presents a game, there are usually two main areas of focus: the opening-to-middlegame transition and the key moments of the middlegame (or endgame, when applicable). With respect to the latter, he attempts to present some serious analysis culled from his best sources (both text and database), which he has checked with his own efforts and then double-checked with his chess software.

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