Dennis Monokroussos writes:
Linares (no longer Morelia/Linares) starts next week, and Magnus Carlsen is
among the participants. Even though he is already one of the world's absolute
elite, currently #4 on the FIDE rating list and #3 on the Live Top List, he
is just 18 years of age. (Be very afraid, chess world!)
2008 was a banner year for the young Norwegian, and we'll take a look at one
of his many great games from that time period. He finished tied for second in
the season-ending Bilbao Masters, and among his three victories was a power
win over Levon Aronian. In a theoretically significant Semi-Slav (that's a redundancy
nowadays) Carlsen introduced a dynamic, even shocking pawn sacrifice for the
initiative. Aronian defended well for quite a while, but not long enough! It
is very difficult to hold up against a prolonged initiative, and Carlsen did
well by never allowing his opponent to come in reach of a stable position.
Ultimately, Aronian cracked. Carlsen had a neat tactic prepared, and Aronian's
first slip was fatal. Yet it's the game as a whole that is impressive: a fine
opening concept, a lively middlegame involving play all over the board, and
a nice tactic to bring home the point. This is how contemporary chess is played,
and Carlsen is one of its leaders.
We'll look at this game tomorrow night - Wednesday night - on ChessBase's Playchess.com
server, and I hope I'll see you there. The show is free for Playchess members;
just log on at 9 p.m. ET (that's Thursday morning at 3 a.m. CET for my European
viewers), go to the Broadcast room, look up Carlsen-Aronian in the Games list,
double-click, sit back and enjoy!
Dennis Monokroussos'
Radio ChessBase
lectures begin on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. EST, which translates to 02:00h
GMT, 03:00 Paris/Berlin, 13:00h Sydney (on Thursday). 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. |
You can find the exact times for different locations in the world at World
Time and Date. Exact times for most larger cities are here.
And you can watch older lectures by Dennis Monokroussos offline in
the Chess Media System room of Playchess:
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).
Monokroussos in Mexico: World Championship 2007
|
Dennis Monokroussos is 41, lives in South Bend, IN, where
he teaches chess and occasionally works as an adjunct professor of philosophy
at the University of Notre Dame and Indiana University-South Bend.
At one time he was one of the strongest juniors in the U.S. and has reached
a peak rating of 2434 USCF, but several long breaks from tournament play have
made him rusty. He is now resuming tournament chess in earnest, hoping to reach
new heights.
Dennis has been working as a chess teacher for ten 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.
