Playchess lectures with Alterman and Monokroussos

Boris Alterman on the Falkbeer Counter Gambit

Black gets a very interesting positional compensation for the pawn. It has never been proved unsound and White must play very carefully. 3.exd5 e4! The basic idea behind Black's strategy is to hamper White's development with the e-pawn while obtaining rapid development for his own pieces.

If you like the initiative, the Falkbeer Counter Gambit is your best choice against the King's Gambit!"

Dennis Monokroussos: The Best Offense is a Good Defense?

While the Kramnik-Leko match has been quite interesting in its own right, we’ll take a look at something more lively this Monday night – a fine attacking game by Artur Jussupow over Dutch GM John van der Wiel. Jussupow, one of the world’s super-elite from the mid-80s through the early 90s, wins with what looks like great ease – but there are some very subtle moments behind the scenes. Several times during the game, van der Wiel is on the verge of securing good counterplay, and the “obvious” attacking continuations for Jussupow would have let his opponent back into the contest. By taking a careful look at the crucial moments when that counterplay was prevented, we’ll learn some important lessons about attacking, prophylaxis and calculation – it’s not just a beautiful game; it’s instructive, too! Finally, the game started with the English Opening, and that will give us a chance to discuss some of the pros and cons of reversed openings. Great stuff – see everyone on 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)