Knock-out king Alexander Khalifman

Dennis Monokroussos writes:

As the FIDE World Championships continue in San Luis, Argentina, we'll take a look to an earlier FIDE event, the knockout tournament in Las Vegas in 1999. Stars like Kramnik, Shirov, Ivanchuk, Kamsky, Adams, Gelfand and Polgar were playing, but the winner was not from among this group.

Instead, the winner was a 33-year-old Russian, Alexander Khalifman. A very strong player long recognized as a genuine talent by his peers, "Khalif" never managed to break into the world's super-elite. Until this event...

After come-from-behind match wins against GMs Dibyendu Barua and Gata Kamsky, Khalifman found his stride, defeating GMs Karen Asrian and Boris Gelfand without losing a game. Next up was Judit Polgar, and despite his underdog status, he won an attractive first game and held on nicely for the draw in the sequel. That put him in the semi-finals, where he defeated Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu, and from there into the finals, where a 3.5-2.5 triumph over Vladimir Akopian made him the FIDE World Champion.

In this week's show, we'll take a look at his victory over Polgar. Khalifman is an aggressive positional player and an openings specialist, and these qualities are on display in this game. Polgar produced the novelty, but it was Khalifman who achieved an opening edge. Subtle play in the early middlegame let him increase his advantage, which he duly converted with the help of some fine tactics. It's a strategically complete game, a model for players of all styles, and a worthy demonstration of one of the great but underappreciated players of our time. Hope to see everyone this Monday night at 9 p.m. 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 39, 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.

Here are the exact times for different locations in the world