Dennis Monokroussos writes: "Before there was Morozevich, there
was Bent Larsen. Now essentially retired, Larsen was one of the very best players
in the world from the early 60s through the early 80s. How strong was he? In
the late 60s, he won practically every tournament he entered, to the point
where in the 1970 match between the Soviet team and a Rest-of-the-World team,
Larsen was on board one, playing world champion Boris Spassky. Bobby Fischer
was board two. Later that year, in the Interzonal, Fischer won, but Larsen
defeated him in their individual game. Always confident, both in his playing
strength and in his sometimes non-traditional understanding of the game, the
Great Dane was one of the strongest and most colorful players of his era.
In Monday’s game, against Eleazar Jimenez from the Palma de Mallorca
tournament of 1967, we are treated to typically dynamic and unusual Larsen
chess: a provocative variation of a risky opening, a startling pair of decisions
– trading the king’s sole defender, a fianchettoed bishop, for
a knight that could be otherwise traded, followed by voluntarily allowing his
pawns to be doubled and artificially isolated. Remarkably, the end result is
a significant advantage, and Larsen finished the game with accuracy and power.
Sometimes, we learn best by seeing model games showing the power of the rules
in chess, but sometimes what we need is just the opposite – we need to
see that the “rules” are just rules of thumb – we need our
minds expanded! To that end, few players, certainly of that era, played more
valuable games than the great Bent Larsen. Enjoy!"
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.
Dennis Monokroussos' Radio
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