The greatest chess game ever played...
15.08.2004 Anderssen-Kieseritzky? Byrne-Fischer? Botvinnik-Capablanca? No, none of these.
According to our Playchess.com trainer
Dennis Monokroussos the award goes to Estrin-Berliner from the 5th Correspondence World
Chess Championship. Well, maybe. Judge for yourself in Dennis' Monday night lecture
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!"
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 below. You can use Fritz
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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.
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