Ratmir Kholmov, 'the central defender'

Dennis Monokroussos writes:

Ratmir Kholmov's skill in repulsing enemy aggression led to his receiving the nickname "the central defender", but this strong Russian grandmaster had his brilliant attacking days, too.

One of his most famous efforts came against the great David Bronstein in the 1964 USSR championship. Bronstein's aggressive play on the Black side of a Najdorf Sicilian left Kholmov in a position where his obvious attacking ideas failed and retreat left Black with an edge. Bronstein, for all his tactical and creative brilliance, didn’t see Kholmov’s idea (and my computer doesn’t either!), but where even he failed, Kholmov succeeded, refuting his opponent's over-aggressive play with a very deep sacrificial idea.

Deep, creative, and…explicable! By delving into the position leading up to the sac, we’ll see that even the most ingenious tactics can be discovered by thoughtful reflection on the logic of a position – and that’s a lesson we can all use in our chess!

Curious? Join me this Monday night at 9 pm ET – hope to see you then!

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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