MARK RUBERY CHESS

During WW2 the chess champion of the world, Alexander Alekhine, played a number of tournaments in Germany and countries it was then occupying as well as authoring a number of controversial articles published in the Nazi press.

Right after the war Alekhine was boycotted by the whole chess community. One of those who took exception the most was Max Euwe, a former world champion and a future president of FIDE. Grandmaster Denker in his book “The Bobby Fischer I knew and Other Stories” describes more or less in detail this campaign against Alekhine. Denker was against Alekhine too. This is what Denker writes: “Back in the Depression years Alekhine lavished me with kindness - free dinners, superb analysis sessions, instructive practice games...This king of chess treated a young, unknown player like a prince...And now I found myself going along with the condemnatory herd.

To this day I regret that more of us did not act like a certain officer in De Gaulle’s Free French Army, whose parents had been murdered in 1911 at Rostov-on-Don in a Ukrainian pogrom. I am speaking about Dr. Savielly Tartakower, who publicly pleaded Alekhine’s case and then facing down the entire group, proceeded to take up a collection for the stricken champion, who was penniless in Portugal.

Keres was one of a few very strong players who composed chess studies. Here is an attractive problem that was one of his first to be published.

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