John Nunn's New Year's fireworks

Dennis Monokroussos writes:

Nowadays practically every chess fan knows about Alexei Shirov, and rightly so. Not only has Shirov been near the top of world chess for over a decade, but his brilliance in wildly complicated positions has made him a big fan favorite.

In many ways, however, John Nunn offered the chess world something similar. (Past tense: according to his latest memoir, Grandmaster Chess Move by Move, his days as a professional player are over.) Though never quite reaching Shirov's heights in the world's pecking order, Nunn has been an elite grandmaster for over two decades and a truly feared attacking player.

Put the two together and the fireworks fly – and in our game for this week, it's Shirov who gets burned. In their game from the 1995 Donner Memorial in Amsterdam, Shirov meets Nunn's beloved King's Indian with the Classical Variation with 9.Ne1. The traditional White-on-the-queenside vs. Black-on-the-kingside race ensues, and on this occasion Black was faster. Shirov attempts to stall the attack by giving up a knight for three pawns, but it doesn't work. The exchange altered the complexion of the game, but left White with holes a-plenty, leading to a decisive second wave of the attack. With his king on e6, about to be mated, Shirov resigned.

It's an impressive win for Nunn, but hardly out of the ordinary, as the reader can easily verify by looking through collections of his games. I hope this week's show will my encourage my viewers to further investigate his career – one could do far worse in seeking a model attacking player.

I hope you'll all join me for the first show of 2006 this Monday at 9 pm ET – see you then!

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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