Playchess lectures with Alterman and Monokroussos

Boris Alterman writes

This time my lecture is about the Alekhine-Chattard Attack in the French Defence: 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 Be7 5.e5 Nfd7 6.h4!?

The opening has gained immense popularity. Just to name a few stars: Garry Kasparov and Alexander Grischuk play it regularly. Last year Alexander Morozevich demolished Victor Korchnoi in just twenty moves with the aggressive Alekhine-Chatard Attack.

In the Alekhine-Chatard Attack White sacrifices his h-pawn for an immensely dangerous initiative. This opening variation leads to the complex struggle, where White has the rapid development. Purposing his forces toward the King side, White possesses a long term pressure for the sacrificed material.

Dennis Monokroussos writes

What Kasparov and Short hath sundered, Kramnik and Leko are helping put together. This Saturday will mark the beginning of their match for one of the world chess championships and another step towards the fulfillment of the Prague Agreement for the reunification of the title. In anticipation of this match, we’ll take a look at two of their games – a win for each, and featuring extremely sharp play in both cases. While I doubt anyone will be surprised to learn that most of their games have been draws, a very large number of those draws have been hard-fought (the average length of their 51 games has been 41 moves). In any case, fear not: we’ll see wins, not draws, and very sharp wins featuring dynamic openings at that – a main line Open Sicilian and the bizarre Adorjan Gambit! See you Monday!

About the lecturers

GM Boris Alterman is 34, and lives in Israel. He was born in Kharkov, Ukraine, where he started playing chess at the age of 7. His career highlights include earning the IM title in 1991 and the GM title in 1992.He is the winner of the following Open and GM tournaments: Haifa 1993; Bad Homburg 1996; Rishon LeZion 1996; Beijing 1995 and 1997; Munchen 1992. His hobbies include computers and swimming, his favourite food is Chinese, he speaks fluent Russian, Hebrew and English.

Boris has worked for and against Garry Kasparov. In 1999 he assisted the world champion in his spectacular Microsoft match Kasparov vs The World, and was also part of the team that built up the web portal Kasparov Chess. In 2003, on the other hand, he was part of the Deep Junior team that gave Kasparov a run for his money in the New York match.

Dennis Monokroussos is 38, 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.

World-wide time schedules

Here are the international starting times for Boris Alterman's lectures:

Here are the exact starting times for Dennis Monokroussos' lectures:

* indicates that the place is currently observing daylight saving time (DST)