The gentleman boxer world chess champion

Dennis Monokroussos writes: Max Euwe was quite an unusual world champion, in many ways. As a young man, he boxed and received a Ph.D. in mathematics. He was a real gentleman and a fine sportsman, respected by all. He engaged in no power plays or elusive maneuvers to protect his title. Even more unusually, he wasn’t even a professional player! He taught mathematics at a girl’s school and would take leave on occasion to play in tournaments. No doubt this made his life a richer one, but it made it hard, perhaps impossible, for him to maintain his best form, and by the 1953 Candidates tournament both age and rust meant his best days were behind him.

And yet…in the first half of the event, which was a double round-robin, he was among the leaders, tied for fifth (out of 15) at the midway point, just two points behind Vassily Smyslov, the leader and eventual winner. And not only was his play a sporting success; it was an artistic success as well; indeed, two of his games from the first half remain famous to this day. We’ll look at the lesser-known of the two, against the Polish/Argentinean legend Miguel Najdorf. The latter, with Black, played the opening in aggressive but risky fashion, and Euwe’s chess principles led him to try to punish Najdorf’s play, even, ultimately, at the cost of a rook. The result was a beautiful game, and one that offers not only a model for attack but also, on a psychological level, for dealing with an opponent who “sins” in the opening. Join us this Monday night, and enjoy!

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