Roman Dzindzichashvili in his prime

Dennis Monokroussos writes:

Roman Dzindzichashvili is best known nowadays for his opening books and videos, and for his online play. But the American GM (by way of Georgia and Israel) was once among the world’s strongest players. His victims include such players as Botvinnik and Bronstein from his days in the USSR, Larsen and Timman after he left, and Shabalov and Nakamura in his tenure here in the US.

He hasn’t played all that much in the last few years, but it’s worth taking the time to get acquainted with his style. This week we’ll take a look at a tactical gem from 1973, played in a semi-final of the Soviet Championship against Vitaly Tseshkovsky. The game started quietly enough, as a sort of Reti/English hybrid, but the play sharpened considerably as “Dzindzi” built up a kingside attack. His advantage grew consistently through move 26, when the natural move would have given him a decisive advantage. Objectively, his choice was an error, but it was the beginning of a fantastic conception whose key idea was revealed several moves later. Objectively, I repeat, the idea was inferior to the pedestrian 26.e4, but this was a clear case of a felix culpa. Dzindzichashvili’s combination was sound, brilliant, and just about impossible to handle in time pressure, and Tseshkovsky went down to defeat.

I think you’ll find the game entertaining, and opening connoisseurs will enjoy seeing an opening that doesn’t get much coverage in our shows. Hope to see you all tonight – Thursday at 9 pm ET!

You can find the exact times for different locations in the world at World Time and Date. Exact times for most larger cities are here. And you can watch older lectures by Dennis Monokroussos offline in the Chess Media System room of Playchess:

Enter the above archive room and click on "Games" to see the lectures. The lectures, which can go for an hour or more, will cost you between one and two ducats. That is the equivalent of 10-20 Euro cents (14-28 US cents).

Dennis Monokroussos is 40, lives in South Bend, IN, and is an adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.

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.