Topalov vs Kramnik on the day off

Dennis Monokroussos writes:

Continuing our “preview” of the now-ongoing world championship reunification match between Classical champion Vladimir Kramnik and FIDE champ Veselin Topalov, this week’s show evens things out. Last week’s show featured a fine win by Topalov achieved in something akin to his opponent’s style; it was a great game indeed. But while Topalov can play like Kramnik, Kramnik can play like Topalov, too!

Want proof? We’ll have a look at Topalov-Kramnik, from Belgrade 1995. Neither player castled, both sent pieces on odd missions on opposite sides of the board (bizarrely, the game features both Nc7xRa8 and …Nf2xRh1), constant complications and Kramnik declining a draw by repetition to continue a promising but speculative attack. The game was wild from start to finish, and although Kramnik didn’t quite play the complications perfectly, he handled them extremely well – and better than his opponent.

It’s a fantastically entertaining game, and a great way to enjoy the day off from the match. Hope to see you all in the Broadcast Room at 9:00 pm ET!

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 40, 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.

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