Alexander Grischuk, the neglected genius

Dennis Monokroussos writes:

Alexander Grischuk burst onto the scene in 2000, when as a mere 17-year old he reached the semi-finals of the FIDE world championships, losing narrowly in a very tough, brilliant match with Shirov. Since then he has underperformed a bit, given his great promise, but his qualification through the Candidates might mark a turn to its fulfillment.

Let’s hope so, because we’ll want to see more games like the ones we’ll look at this Thursday. Our main game is a charming King’s Gambit massacre against Valeri Yandemirov, and, time permitting, we’ll have a second, bonus game as well. Both games reveal his attacking prowess, and prove that even GMs can be devoured in the opening – even when preparation isn’t involved. Very entertaining chess, and you’ll want to see it for yourself this Thursday night at 9 p.m. 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.