Boris Alterman on the Benko Gambit

"In Russia this gambit is still called the Volga, while in the West it is named after the Hungarian-American Grandmaster, Pal Benko. Benko brought this opening into tournament practice at the highest levels starting in the mid 1940s.

In the Benko Gambit, Black sacrifices a pawn not only for the lead in development, but more for the positional pressure on the queenside. Logically then, White's main plan is to break the center, aiming the Black's kingside.

The Benko gambit is still one of the most popular openings even at the top level."

Dennis Monokroussos: The Best Offense is a Good Defense?

In response to popular demand, this week’s show will feature a recap of the dramatic conclusion of the recently-finished Kramnik-Leko match. First, we’ll take a look at the fascinating double rook ending from game 13, a very complicated endgame in which both sides seem to have made significant errors, and then we’ll look at the dramatic finale, Kramnik’s clutch win in game 14. This game is not only historically interesting but instructive as well, from both the purely chess perspective and the psychological perspective as well. See you Monday night – enjoy the show!

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)