A clash of styles and personalities

Dennis Monokroussos writes:

One of the greatest events in 19th century chess was the long match in 1893 between Russian Mikhail Chigorin and German Siegbert Tarrasch. These two giants of the game were among the absolute best players in the world at the end of the Steinitz era, and this match could be seen as selecting the champion's crown prince. As it turned out, however, the battle between these stylistic antipodes wound up a draw: +9 –9 =4(!), even though Tarrasch was ahead for most of the match.

Clash of personalities and styles: Mikhail Ivanovich Chigorin vs Dr Siegbert Tarrasch

The match offers an embarrassment of riches to the chess fan and student, from which I've selected the 18th game. Chigorin plays his idiosyncratic anti-French variation with 2.Qe2, and a unique and peculiar position quickly arises. Chigorin does a better job of navigating through the early middlegame, but an error on the verge of winning leads to a marvelously instructive rook ending won by the great Russian.

It's an entertaining game, and there's plenty to learn, too, so please join me this Monday night at 9 p.m. ET on the playchess.com server. See you then!

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.

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