Playchess lecture: Caro-Kann or Semi-Slav

Dennis Monokroussos writes:

The many-headed Semi-Slav is one of the sharpest variations (really a cluster of variations) in all of chess, and that's just what we get in this week's game, from the 1993 edition of the sadly defunct yearly event in Tilburg. The opening is precisified into the Meran Variation, and Dreev achieved quite a nice position in the early middlegame. What makes the game special is his decision to first sac the exchange (on move 24) and then a piece for two pawns (on move 29 - and quite possibly foreseen at the time of the first sac). Neither sac won outright; they were genuine offers for long-term control, for enduring pressure.

While it takes both imagination and guts to make sacrifices of that sort, it's easier, once the sac has been made, to be on the aggressor's side. It's difficult both from a purely chess standpoint and especially from the psychological perspective to defend against an opponent's long-term initiative. Gelfand is a gifted defender of such positions in the Najdorf (see last week's show; see also his games this year with Radjabov and Nakamura), but on this occasion he wasn't up to the job, and Dreev brought home the full point on move 44.

With a sharp opening, long-term sacrifices and aggressive positional play, there's something of instructional and entertainment value for virtually all chess fans. I hope, therefore, to see all my readers this Monday night at 9 p.m. ET.

P.S. Next week is the Halloween Show, when I like to commemorate horrifying blunders, gut-wrenching chokes, and other examples of noteworthy folly from the history of the game. I haven’t yet decided what to cover for this year’s program, so if you show up this week and stay afterwards, you can help by suggesting suitably hideous games for next week’s show!

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.

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