Dennis Monokroussos writes:
Alexander
Alekhine is, of course, one of the all-time greats of the game. A
feared attacker, a great annotator, and a deep researcher of openings and a
very hard worker at the game in general, Alekhine was a key figure in the transition
to the game as we know it today. Many of his games were works of art –
sometimes literally! I don’t mean by this that he played chess on a canvas,
but that on more than one occasion, games he presented as his own were simply
made up, in part or even in toto.
In this week’s show, we’ll take a look at one such game, and throw
in a fragment of dubious provenance as well. First up is Alekhine-Gregoriev,
a casual game allegedly played in 1915. The game’s authenticity has long
been doubted, as is nowadays almost universally recognized as a fake. We’ll
discuss it, as well as the real game on which it was based, and then we’ll
turn to the equally famous Alekhine-Gofmeister fragment, from an odds game
played in 1917. As far as I know, the authenticity of this fragment has not
been challenged – but it is at least as fantastic as the Gregoriev game!
Whatever the truth about these two games, what is clear is that they are both
brilliant and beautiful productions of a great mind, and comprise a marvelous
chess feast for us to enjoy this next Monday night at 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
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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. Since Europe
has switched from Summer to Regular time please double-check at World
Time and Date for your time zone.
If your own city or time zone is not listed you can find it at World
Time and Date