The greatest chess game ever played...

The greatest game ever played

Dennis Monokroussos writes: "Well, maybe. It’s pretty tough to make such a grandiose claim, but Estrin-Berliner from the 5th Correspondence World Championship has as good a claim as any to that lofty title. Hans Berliner, on his way to the title, produces a fearsome novelty against future correspondence champion Yakov Estrin in the latter’s specialty, the Two Knights Defense. Berliner’s opening idea was so deep that it is still debated to this day, and needless to say, Estrin could not even begin to solve everything, even under the relatively leisurely time controls afforded by correspondence chess. Instead, he tried to bail out to a drawn ending via a long forcing sequence. Here too, Berliner was a step ahead of him, capping off the crown jewel of his correspondence career with a beautifully played – and instructive – rook ending.

This is a game not to be missed: it possesses opening theory you can use, beautiful endgame technique, and complications to suit even the most discriminating tactical connoisseur. Check it out, bring your friends (except those who play the Italian game against you), and prepare yourself for a feast!"

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Dennis Monokroussos is 37, 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.