MARK RUBERY CHESS
Halloween is appropriately the birth date of the darkest and most brilliant of the World Champions, the incomparable Alexander Alekhine (1892-1946). Alekhine was the only man to die when holding the World Championship. Aside from an addiction to chess, he had an affinity to alcohol that led to cirrhosis of the liver and also the loss of his title to Max Euwe in 1935. A revitalised Alekhine recaptured the chess throne in 1937, yet his reputation was to reach its lowest ebb when he was commissioned by the Nazis to write anti-Semitic articles on the game at the beginning of World War 2. During the war years he lived in Spain and Portugal, a shadow of his former-self and in 1946 he died through choking on a piece of meat at the Parque hotel, Estoril. A theory proposed by GM Kevin Spraggett who resided in Portugal, is that the French government formed death squads after the war to liquidate Nazi collaborators, and Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine would have been the top of an alphabetical list of liable victims.
Whatever one thinks of Alekhine the man; his genius for the game can never be questioned.
The following game is almost one relentless combination as Alekhine unleashes tactic after tactic until his opponent is overwhelmed.
Reti Richard - Alekhine Alexander [A00]
Baden Baden (08), 1925
1.g3 e5 2.Nf3 (Alekhines Defence reversed where the extra move g3 has little relevance)... e4 3.Nd4 d5 4.d3 exd3 5.Qxd3 Nf6 6.Bg2 Bb4+ 7.Bd2 Bxd2+ 8.Nxd2 0–0 9.c4 Na6 10.cxd5 Nb4 11.Qc4 Nbxd5 12.N2b3 c6 13.0–0 Re8 14.Rfd1 Bg4 15.Rd2 Qc8 16.Nc5 Bh3 17.Bf3 Bg4 18.Bg2 Bh3 19.Bf3 Bg4 20.Bh1 h5! (Initiating a weakening of the White kingside-a good device to remember) 21.b4 a6 22.Rc1 h4 23.a4 hxg3 24.hxg3 Qc7 25.b5 axb5 26.axb5
...Re3!! (The beginning of the combinational bombardment, the initial threat being 27... Rxg3+) 27.Nf3?! (If 27 fxe3? Qxg3+ 28 Bg2 Nxe3 mating. With the benefit of hindsight a defence to Alekhine’s inspiration has been unearthed via 27 Kh2! Raa3 28 Nd3 Nh5 29 Qxd5! Nxg3 30 Kg1 Nxe2+ 31 Nxe2 Rxe2 32 Qc5-Nunn, when White has the better of a probable draw) ...cxb5 28.Qxb5 Nc3! 29.Qxb7 (29 Qc4 b5!)... Qxb7 30.Nxb7 Nxe2+ 31.Kh2 Ne4! 32.Rc4 Nxf2 33.Bg2 Be6 34.Rcc2 Ng4+ 35.Kh3 Ne5+ 36.Kh2 Rxf3 37.Rxe2 Ng4+ 38.Kh3 Ne3+ 39.Kh2 Nxc2 40.Bxf3 Nd4 0–1 (As the deadly geometry continues with 41 Rf2 Nxf3+ 42 Rxf3 Bd5)
Alekhine is a poet who creates a work of art out of something that would hardly inspire another man to send home a picture post card. – Max Euwe
‘The fact that a player is very short of time is to my mind, as little to be considered as an excuse as, for instance, the statement of the law-breaker that he was drunk at the time he committed the crime’. (Alekhine)
During a chess tournament a master must envisage himself as a cross between an ascetic monk and a beast of prey.(Alekhine)