Dennis Monokroussos writes:
With an eventful 2006 behind us, we’ll take a look at my favourite game
of the past year, the dazzling attacking masterpiece Peter Svidler vs Magnus
Carlsen from their rapid match in (the aptly named) Longyearbyen
this past September. In a sideline of the Rossolimo Sicilian, the players reached
the following position after 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bb5 Qc7 5.O-O
Nd4 6.Nxd4 cxd4 7.Nd5 Nxd5 8.exd5 a6 9.Ba4 g6 10.d3 h6
In his comments to the game in New in Chess (2006/7, p. 7), Svidler says that
the “general rule for this position says that Black is fine if he manages
to play …Kf8 and …d6”, and he found a remarkable way to prevent
it. Just how he managed to do that, and the marvelous complications that ensued,
will be the subject of our show this Thursday night (9 pm ET), and I hope to
see you then!
Dennis Monokroussos'
Radio ChessBase
lectures begin on Thursdays 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. |
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.
