Looking back at the world championships
7/12/2004 – As another world championship winds down, let’s take a look at where we’ve come from. The first official world chess championship took place in 1886, and tonight Dennis Monokroussos talks about the history of the highest title.
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Dennis Monokroussos writes: As another world championship (of some sort!) winds down and we see the heights of contemporary chess, let’s take a time out to see where we’ve come from. The first official world chess championship took place in 1886, and tonight we’ll talk about the history of the highest title and take a look at the first game of the first match, between Zukertort and Steinitz. The game is an interesting mélange of the old and new; instructive, entertaining, and a milestone worth revisiting. Tune in and enjoy!
Dennis Monokroussos' Radio ChessBase lectures begin on Mondays 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 below. You can use Fritz or any Fritz-compatible program (Shredder, Junior, Tiger, Hiarcs) to follow the lectures, or download a free trial client. |
Here are the exact times for different locations in the world
| Abu Dhabi | Tue 05:00 | Halifax * | Mon 22:00 | New Orleans * | Mon 20:00 | ||||
| Addis Ababa | Tue 04:00 | Hanoi | Tue 08:00 | New York * | Mon 21:00 | ||||
| Adelaide | Tue 10:30 | Harare | Tue 03:00 | Odesa * | Tue 04:00 | ||||
| Aden | Tue 04:00 | Havana * | Mon 21:00 | Oslo * | Tue 03:00 | ||||
| Aklavik * | Mon 19:00 | Helsinki * | Tue 04:00 | Ottawa * | Mon 21:00 | ||||
| Algiers | Tue 02:00 | Hong Kong | Tue 09:00 | Paris * | Tue 03:00 | ||||
| Amman * | Tue 04:00 | Honolulu | Mon 15:00 | Perth | Tue 09:00 | ||||
| Amsterdam * | Tue 03:00 | Houston * | Mon 20:00 | Philadelphia * | Mon 21:00 | ||||
| Anadyr * | Tue 14:00 | Indianapolis | Mon 20:00 | Phoenix | Mon 18:00 | ||||
| Anchorage * | Mon 17:00 | Islamabad | Tue 06:00 | Prague * | Tue 03:00 | ||||
| Ankara * | Tue 04:00 | Istanbul * | Tue 04:00 | Rangoon | Tue 07:30 | ||||
| Antananarivo | Tue 04:00 | Jakarta | Tue 08:00 | Reykjavik | Tue 01:00 | ||||
| Asuncion | Mon 21:00 | Jerusalem * | Tue 04:00 | Rio de Janeiro | Mon 22:00 | ||||
| Athens * | Tue 04:00 | Johannesburg | Tue 03:00 | Riyadh | Tue 04:00 | ||||
| Atlanta * | Mon 21:00 | Kabul | Tue 05:30 | Rome * | Tue 03:00 | ||||
| Baghdad * | Tue 05:00 | Kamchatka * | Tue 14:00 | San Francisco * | Mon 18:00 | ||||
| Bangkok | Tue 08:00 | Karachi | Tue 06:00 | San Juan | Mon 21:00 | ||||
| Barcelona * | Tue 03:00 | Kathmandu | Tue 06:45 | San Salvador | Mon 19:00 | ||||
| Beijing | Tue 09:00 | Khartoum | Tue 04:00 | Santiago | Mon 21:00 | ||||
| Beirut * | Tue 04:00 | Kingston | Mon 20:00 | Santo Domingo | Mon 21:00 | ||||
| Belgrade * | Tue 03:00 | Kiritimati | Tue 15:00 | Sao Paulo | Mon 22:00 | ||||
| Berlin * | Tue 03:00 | Kolkata | Tue 06:30 | Seattle * | Mon 18:00 | ||||
| Bogota | Mon 20:00 | Kuala Lumpur | Tue 09:00 | Seoul | Tue 10:00 | ||||
| Boston * | Mon 21:00 | Kuwait City | Tue 04:00 | Shanghai | Tue 09:00 | ||||
| Brasilia | Mon 22:00 | Kyiv * | Tue 04:00 | Singapore | Tue 09:00 | ||||
| Brisbane | Tue 11:00 | La Paz | Mon 21:00 | Sofia * | Tue 04:00 | ||||
| Brussels * | Tue 03:00 | Lagos | Tue 02:00 | St. John's * | Mon 22:30 | ||||
| Bucharest * | Tue 04:00 | Lahore | Tue 06:00 | St. Paul * | Mon 20:00 | ||||
| Budapest * | Tue 03:00 | Lima | Mon 20:00 | Stockholm * | Tue 03:00 | ||||
| Buenos Aires | Mon 22:00 | Lisbon * | Tue 02:00 | Suva | Tue 13:00 | ||||
| Cairo * | Tue 04:00 | London * | Tue 02:00 | Sydney | Tue 11:00 | ||||
| Canberra | Tue 11:00 | Los Angeles * | Mon 18:00 | Taipei | Tue 09:00 | ||||
| Cape Town | Tue 03:00 | Madrid * | Tue 03:00 | Tallinn * | Tue 04:00 | ||||
| Caracas | Mon 21:00 | Managua | Mon 19:00 | Tashkent | Tue 06:00 | ||||
| Casablanca | Tue 01:00 | Manila | Tue 09:00 | Tegucigalpa | Mon 19:00 | ||||
| Chatham Island | Tue 13:45 | Melbourne | Tue 11:00 | Tehran * | Tue 05:30 | ||||
| Chicago * | Mon 20:00 | Mexico City * | Mon 20:00 | Tokyo | Tue 10:00 | ||||
| Copenhagen * | Tue 03:00 | Minneapolis * | Mon 20:00 | Toronto * | Mon 21:00 | ||||
| Darwin | Tue 10:30 | Minsk * | Tue 04:00 | Vancouver * | Mon 18:00 | ||||
| Denver * | Mon 19:00 | Montevideo | Mon 22:00 | Vienna * | Tue 03:00 | ||||
| Detroit * | Mon 21:00 | Montgomery * | Mon 20:00 | Vladivostok * | Tue 12:00 | ||||
| Dhaka | Tue 07:00 | Montreal * | Mon 21:00 | Warsaw * | Tue 03:00 | ||||
| Dublin * | Tue 02:00 | Moscow * | Tue 05:00 | Washington DC * | Mon 21:00 | ||||
| Edmonton * | Mon 19:00 | Mumbai | Tue 06:30 | Wellington | Tue 13:00 | ||||
| Frankfurt * | Tue 03:00 | Nairobi | Tue 04:00 | Winnipeg * | Mon 20:00 | ||||
| Geneva * | Tue 03:00 | Nassau * | Mon 21:00 | Zagreb * | Tue 03:00 | ||||
| Guatemala | Mon 19:00 | New Delhi | Tue 06:30 | Zürich * | Tue 03:00 |
* indicates that the place is currently observing daylight saving time (DST)
Dennis
Monokroussos is 37, lives in South Bend, IN (the site of the University
of Notre Dame), and is writing a Ph.D. dissertation in philosophy (in the philosophy
of mind) while adjuncting at the University.
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.
