CraigEvans wrote on 01/17/11 at 20:41:11:




Sorry, but as a Spaniard I find that expression in the mouth of an English speaker extremely funny!!

Now seriously: does Monson have a new website on the Belgrade, or you're referring to his former one (long time defunct)?

Best regards,

Thank you Mark for clearing that up. Due to the "teams and countries" I thought it perhaps a fake especially since I didn't think you'd play the black side of the belgrade. I'm glad I asked and glad you took the time to clear it up.

Thanks

Sandman wrote on 01/11/11 at 17:00:36:


I wrote about this on correspondencechess.com, back in the days when I was still active there.  The actual game began on White's 19th, ended after White's 20th, and was part of a lengthy email discussion between me and Monson in which, for the sake of argument, I upheld Black's chances after 9.d6.  From my point of view it was a purely hypothetical dispute.  The conversation was entirely polite, but I think that Monson may eventually have grown somewhat annoyed that I kept saying that Black was O.K.. 

So we're up to, as I recall, 18...Qf6 in our disputations, I say "Black is O.K." and Monson says, "How would you like to play a game from this position?"  I agree, and he sends 19.c3, I reply 19...Bc5, and he uncorks 20.g4!.  I then resign, since not having seen this strong move earlier, it's clear that I've underestimated White's chances.  I don't think much about it, except that it's a strange way for Monson to show me 20.g4!. 

So I was suprised to see later that Monson had published the game, such as it was, on his website, larded with lengthy analysis after 20.g4!.  Reading it would've been a little like sitting in post-mortem with the guy who spends several minutes showing you exactly how brilliant his winning idea was.  But having already understood the strength of Monsons' move, I didn't read further.  Monson did report my resignation on the correct move.  I don't recall whether he bothered to say that the actual game had begun on move 19. Someone has evidently copied some of his analysis into the quoted pgn, but the score as quoted is false. 

On one hand it was a little amusing, but on the other a little unkindly, that Monson took what was essentially an offhand training exercise between chessfriends and presented it as him removing my scalp in an serious CC game.  In discussing my resignation at move 20, Monson said something like "Early resignations are common in CC, where players often carry the burden of many games."  True enough, but it fostered the false impression that this was a formal CC game. In such game, I almost certainly would not have adopted this way of replying to the Belgrade, and if I had, I would like to think that I'd have applied myself a little harder around moves 15-18 and not fallen into Monson's 20.g4! idea.  But I did agree to a game, and Monson won, so there it is.

Having made a favorable impression on many people with Hard Chess, I later discovered that my defeats tended to show up in print with rather rather suprising regularity.  I suppose that people thought that it was neat to have the scalp of a celebrity, albeit a very minor one, though in fact I am a rather middling player whether of CC or OTB.  

Monson is a strong player, and he might well beat me if we ever played a proper CC or OTB game. Or perhaps I might beat him.

On correspondencechess.com I said that if you and your honey are strolling along the carnival midway some evening, munching on popcorn and listening to the calliope, and you see Monson in a booth, grinning demonically over a chess position and offering you a chance to play Black's side of it, walk on.

Here is a corrected score if anyone's interested:

[Event "Training game"]
[Site "email"]
[Date "1998.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Monson Bruce"]
[Black "Morss Mark F"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "C47l"]
[EventDate "1998.??.??"]
[Source "Morss, Mark F."]
[SourceDate "2011.01.11"]
[PlyCount "3"]
[FEN "r1b2r1k/pp1p2pp/1b1p1q2/3B1p1P/4nB2/1N3Q2/PPP3P1/4RK1R w - - 1 19"]

{The game commenced at the position arising from 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.d4 exd4 5.Nd5 Nb4 6.Nxd4 Nbxd5 7.exd5 Bc5 8.Nb3 Bb6 9.d6 O-O 10.Qf3 Qe8+ 11.Be2 Ne4 12.Bf4 Bxf2+ 13.Kf1 Bb6 14.Re1 f5 15.Bc4+ Kh8 16.Bd5 cxd6 17.h4 Qg6 18.h5 Qf6 - Morss} 19.c3 Bc5 20.g4 {20...b6 21.Nxc5 bxc5 22.gxf5 Qxf5 23.Bxa8 Qxf4 24.Qxf4 Rxf4+ 25.Kg2 Nf6 26.Re7 - Monson} 1-0

As Monson and Morkovich both are American I am a bit suspicious.

I'm not usually proud of ignorance. What makes this an exception though is the same factor that allows people to sometimes pass standardized tests without knowing a particular subject to be tested. I would rather maximize my performance on the other 99 games (where I am sure to suffer some loses against openings that come up with some frequency) by studying those lines, middlegames, and so forth. Now, I've been to nearly every chess hangout in town, watched or played nearly every high expert or master (Cuz it's not Berlin here, it's L.A., much less players/clubs) and I have yet to see even one Belgrade Gambit played in tournament or even Blitz. Even the Serbians I've seen don't play it!

I like 1...e5 a lot. To me, the discussion on this particular thread must be based on whatever pleasure the opening produces rather than on practical results. In anycase, I'm unlikely even to face it at all, even in 400 games. But playing e5, I'll get the Spanish, Scotch, and Italian for sure. Don't want to be so negative, but after these pages and digital ink spilt on this topic...

How do you lose a lost one in a hundred game more often than not? Wouldn't it then be a two in a hundred? Anyway, I'm looking forward to wholesale ignorance on this gambit...

I'd rather lose that one in a hundred Belgrade game as Black than spend more than 10 minutes total studying it.

TonyRo wrote on 06/26/09 at 14:43:28:


That's a bargain, for ten bucks.