Dennis Monokroussos writes:
Among those players narrowly missing out on the FIDE World Championships was
Israeli grandmaster Boris Gelfand. He isn't as prominent as he was in the mid-90s,
but he's still near the top (number 13 in the world; number 12 if one excludes
Kasparov) and a very attractive player. He works hard, plays sharp openings
and loves complicated positions – what more could a fan want?
So I'll assume his relative lack of prominence as a fan favorite is an exposure
problem, and will strive to remedy the problem with this week's game, from the
1995 Dos Hermanas tournament. Gelfand essayed the Najdorf against Alexei Shirov,
who utilized the old main line with 6.Bg5 and followed it up with a quick Nd5
piece sacrifice. A razor-sharp middlegame turned into a razor-sharp endgame,
but Gelfand's (more) accurate play, culminating in study-like finish, eventually
brought him the full point.
It's an amazing game – a tactical feast – one so rich we could
easily take two shows to cover it properly (and depending on how things pace,
we just might take that second show)! The game has something for every chess
fan, so I hope you’ll all join me this Monday night (9 p.m. ET) –
see you then!
Dennis Monokroussos'
Radio ChessBase
lectures begin on Mondays at 9 p.m. EDT, which translates to 02:00h GMT,
03:00 Paris/Berlin, 13:00h Sydney (on Tuesday). Other time zones can
be found at the bottom of this page. You can use Fritz or any Fritz-compatible
program (Shredder, Junior, Tiger, Hiarcs) to follow the lectures, or
download a free trial client. |
Note: you can watch older lectures by Dennis Monokroussos here:
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 39, 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.
Here are the exact times for different locations in the world
If your own city or time zone is not listed you can find it at World
Tima and Date
