Anniversary with fireworks

Dennis Monokroussos writes: My basic motivation for the show is to share wonderful games, primarily from the past, with an audience which is unlikely to have seen those games on their own. This week, however, I was the happy recipient of such a treat, as a friend showed me a wonderful battle between two very strong players of long ago, Henry Bird (of 1.f4 fame) and Bernhard Horwitz. Practically from move 1, Bird attacks ferociously, while Horwitz manages, time and again, to find surprising defensive resources.

This game is an analyst's delight and a real pleasure to watch, due to the prolonged dramatic tension caused by both players’ resourcefulness in achieving their respective goals. Only towards the end does Horwitz overstep the bounds of safety, missing a lethal tactic as he spurns a draw by repetition. You might learn something, or you might not, but it's a game worth seeing, as you’ll ooh and ahh from start to finish! See you soon!

Dennis Monokroussos is 38, 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.

Here are the exact times for different locations in the world