When Bush was V.P. and Ljubo was king

Dennis Monokroussos writes:

The people have spoken! Last week, I opened the choice for this week’s show to an audience vote, and we have a winner! The year was 1985, and the world was much different than it is today. For example, a Bush was in the White House – but it was Bush senior, and he was just V.P. Also, Kasparov wasn’t world champion but someone with a “K” name was, and Kasparov was to play him within a few months – but then it was Karpov and now it’s Kasimdzhanov. And Korchnoi was still winning tournaments at an age when the typical self-respecting chess player had long since retired from big-time chess. Some things really just don’t change!

One difference from then till now, however, is an unfortunate one. Nowadays Ljubomir Ljubojevic has retired from the chess scene, but from the mid-70s through the early 90s, he was among the best players in the world; certainly one of the absolute best from outside the (now former) USSR. “Ljubo” was an incredibly dynamic and creative player, thriving in imbalanced, tactical positions with a strength very few of his peers could match. Today’s game, taken from the 1985 Linares event, in which Ljubojevic and Robert Hübner shared first place, finds Ljubo on the White side of a very sharp French Defense against Korchnoi. In a very unclear position, Korchnoi launches a speculative, very dangerous attack that would seem to have every chance of success, but Ljubojevic’s brilliant defense carries the day. Tune in, learn something about the Winawer French, and enjoy a very impressive effort by a player in danger of becoming unjustly forgotten by today’s chess public. Enjoy!

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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.