Dennis Monokroussos writes: In an effort to keep my ChessBase viewers
on a healthy, balanced diet, we'll take a look this week at a typical technical
masterpiece by Swedish great Ulf Andersson. For most of us, if we're playing
a peer and major exchanges occur, a quick draw is the likely result.
Not so for Andersson. Even against the world's super-elite (a group in which
he was included from the late 70s through the early 90s), exchanges were often
not the prelude to a quick draw but the signal that it was time for his opponent
to start suffering.
Case in point: his game with the late, great Lev Polugaevsky from 1990 event
in Haninge. Andersson, with White, willingly trades off pieces – lots
of pieces – and Black has no trouble equalizing. Nevertheless, "equal"
does not mean "drawn", and Andersson was able, in his inimitable
way, to keep making good moves while Polu drifted a little at a time until
finally losing the ending.
So this Monday, we'll take a look and admire Andersson's work, but more than
that we'll learn a number of important lessons both about proper technique
and the psychology of the game as well!
Dennis Monokroussos'
Radio ChessBase
lectures begin on Mondays at 9 p.m. EDT, which translates to 02:00h GMT,
03:00 Paris/Berlin, 13:00h Sydney (on Tuesday). Other time zones can
be found at the bottom of this page. You can use Fritz or any Fritz-compatible
program (Shredder, Junior, Tiger, Hiarcs) to follow the lectures, or
download a free trial client. |
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.
Here are the exact times for different locations in the world
