Dennis Monokroussos writes:
My favorite player of all time, bar none, is the Latvian great Mikhail Tal.
To my mind, there neither was nor is another player more in love with the game
than he, and it showed. There is a joy to his chess that is evident to even
the casual fan, manifested in an almost feral aggression at the chess board.
This joyous aggression was particularly pronounced in the first part of his
career, when he was racing to the top of the chess Olympus, and we'll take a
look at a typical game from this period. Playing against Ukranian great Efim
Geller in the 1958 USSR Championship, Tal continually increased the tension:
first by "normal" means, then with the sacrifice of the exchange and
then an entire rook. Geller, as befits one of the greatest players never to
become world champion, went blow for blow with Tal until the end was just about
in sight. Unfortunately for Geller - and this happened to many of Tal's opponents
- a sort of punch-drunkness set in and he finally fell for one of the simpler
traps in the position.
Nevertheless, the game is one of the masterpieces of Tal's early career, and
I think you'll be very glad you tuned in this Monday night at 9 pm ET, as I
do my best to share some of the ins and outs of this magnificent tactical struggle.
Nothing restores my pleasure in chess more than spending time with Tal's games,
and even if - somehow! - he isn't your favorite player, I hope you will experience
at least a taste of the beauty and exuberance I find there. See you then!
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. |
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.
Here are the exact times for different locations in the world. Since Europe
has switched from Summer to Regular time please double-check at World
Time and Date for your time zone.
If your own city or time zone is not listed you can find it at World
Time and Date
