Dennis Monokroussos writes:
In his great, long career, Paul Keres won many famous games against many famous
opponents, including world champions Capablanca, Alekhine, Euwe, Botvinnik,
Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky and Fischer. There is no shortage of well-known
Keres games, so this week we’ll take a look at one of his lesser-known
efforts, a win against one H. Szapiel from the 1950 Szczawno Zdroj tournament
(which he won).
Paul Keres in his prime
Why? It’s because the game affords us a wonderful opportunity to examine
the way analysis worked in the good old days of adjournments. In the FIDE era
up until the early 90s, the standard time control was 40 moves in 2 and a half
hours – per side! – and after five hours the players would stop
and do their best to analyze the game into the ground, generally with the help
of their seconds. On balance, it might be a good thing that those days are
behind us (especially now that there are powerful chess engines), but progress
has probably come at the expense of endgame and analytical skill. So this week,
we’ll delve deeply, taking a close look at Keres’s thorough analysis.
Not only is the analysis fascinating, but we will receive a meta-benefit as
well: we get a glimpse not just into what Keres thought, but into how he approached
his task.
All the entertainment and twice the instruction – don’t miss out
this Monday night at 9 p.m. ET!
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 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. |
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.
Here are the exact times for different locations in the world. Since Europe
has switched from Summer to Regular time please double-check at World
Time and Date for your time zone.
If your own city or time zone is not listed you can find it at World
Time and Date
