The 14 year old who beat Capablanca!

Pictured at right -- A youthful Botvinnik

The legend of Capablanca the prodigy is well known...how he learned the game at 4 years old by watching his father play; how at twelve he won the Championship of Cuba, and would eventually wrest the World's Championhip Title away from the German chess genius and mathematics professor Dr. Emanuel Lasker.

Here then is an unusual game for though it is won by a youthful future world champion, it's Capablanca who is on the losing side. 

On Novemeber 20th 1925 in a simultaneous display against 30 players in Leningrad, the great Capablanca lost a game to an unheralded youth of 14 who had learned chess just two years earlier. After the play, Capablanca asked the organizer, "What grade does the boy in spectacles belong to?" He was told that he was a "B" grade player, Misha Botvinnik. Capablanca laughed and said, "This youngster plays with the confidence of a master! He will go far."

This is the score of their historic game:

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