Capa outplays Bogo to chase Lasker

Dennis Monokroussos writes:

It wasn't the most successful tournament for the great Jose Capablanca, but the Moscow 1925 event did feature one of his most complicated and subsequently well-analyzed wins ever, his game with tournament winner Efim Bogoljubow. Desperately trying to catch Emanuel Lasker for second and to inflict defeat on the runaway leader, Capablanca played sharply, sacrificing a piece on move nine for a terrific attack. Despite a crucial error at a key moment, the Cuban legend found resource after resource to keep his winning chances alive, and finally outplayed "Bogo" to collect the full point.

Neither side played perfectly, but the game was fascinating despite the mutual errors. Indeed, the errors contributed to the richness of the game - all sorts of crazy positions arose that wouldn't have, had the players executed their moves with mathematical precision.

It is, or at least was, one of the most famous games in Capablanca's career, and as such is worth knowing for historical reasons. Yet even more important is what we can learn from the game: there are lessons regarding opening theory, on how to attack (even in the absence of queens) and defend, and on the psychological failings that affected Capablanca at this stage of his career, and that might affect many of us as well. The game is an instructional gold mine, and I hope you’ll all join me in digging for treasure this Monday night at 9 p.m.

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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