Dennis Monokroussos writes:
The
late Efim Geller (1925-1998) is one of my favorite players of yesteryear, and
with good reason. He was among the world's best for about 30 years, and among
his many achievements are two Soviet championship titles, an incredible six
times in the Candidates cycle, and a +2 career score against Bobby Fischer.
He was a great theoretician, as evidenced by Botvinnik's famous remark that
"before Geller, we did not understand the King's Indian." Geller was
at times a trainer as well, and according to Kasparov he helped Botvinnik, Petrosian,
Spassky, Karpov and (in an unofficial capacity) Kasparov himself in world championship
matches. He was never world champion (though he tied for first in the 1991 world
senior championship and won it outright in 1992), but he was a very important
figure in the not-too-distant history of our game.
Accordingly, it's appropriate to celebrate his legacy every now and again,
though it's slightly ironic that the game we'll look at later tonight, against
the famous attacking player Dragoljub Velimirovic (1942- ), from the 1971 Capablanca
Memorial in Havana, sees him defeating his opponent's King's Indian rather than
employing it himself. Velimirovic provoked an early tactical crisis, as is his
wont, and had Geller responded normally, Black would have enjoyed excellent
compensation for his intended pawn sacrifice.
Instead, Geller sacrificed an entire rook for long-term attacking prospects.
His decision was impossible to justify by calculation alone, but his gutsy and
creative choice proved correct. Ultimately, he regained the material, reached
a superior endgame, and in the end won a terrific game.
It's a game well worth seeing, so I hope you'll all join me tonight (Thursday
night) at 9 pm ET. Hope to see you then!
Dennis Monokroussos'
Radio ChessBase
lectures begin on Thursdays at 9 p.m. EDT, which translates to 01:00h
GMT, 02:00 Paris/Berlin, 11:00h Sydney (on Friday). 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.