Dennis Monokroussos writes:
The recent item linking the Boston
Globe article on American great Harry Nelson Pillsbury suggested that this
would be a good week to cover one of his games. This week, therefore, we'll
take a look at his last great triumph, his victory over world champion Emanuel
Lasker in the Cambridge Springs tournament of 1904. Pillsbury rocketed into
the super-elite in his early 20s, but after contracting syphilis his career,
and ultimately his life, was cut tragically short.
Cambridge Springs 1904 was his last international event, and while his performance
in the tournament was mediocre by his standards, he rose to the occasion against
the champion, equalizing their career scores. Utilizing an important, long-planned
improvement over his choice in an 1896 loss to the same player, they rapidly
reached a position where Pillsbury's lead in development compensated for a
pawn and the bishop pair. The position was roughly balanced, but Pillsbury
was in his element, outplayed his great opponent, and won brilliantly.
It's a great game, an interesting opening, and covers a player all real chess
fans (especially but not only in the U.S.) should know about! I hope therefore
you'll join me this Monday night at 9 pm ET on ChessBase's playchess.com server.
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
