Mysterious and annoying – the Berlin Defence

Dennis Monokroussos writes: "Few openings strike terror into the heart of a chess fan like the Berlin Defense. Using it like a virtuoso, Vladimir Kramnik not only won the (a?) world chess championship from Garry Kasparov, but also, simultaneously, succeeded in putting thousands of chess lovers into a coma-like state. Okay, let’s grant that the Berlin isn’t the Botvinnik Variation of the Semi-Slav or the English Attack in the Najdorf. What it is, however, is mysterious and annoying to many players – and that’s a fact that we as chess players, as opposed to chess fans, can certainly use! If we play and understand the Berlin and our opponents play natural, normal moves, we will have excellent winning chances! Best of all, while the games will be long, some themes are pretty straightforward, as we’ll see from our examination of the classic 1889 game between Max Harmonist and Siegbert Tarrasch. Join us tonight for a game showing the power of the two bishops, a little patience, and… the Berlin Defense – it will be worth your while!"

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.

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