Amazing tournaments - Part I - 1938 Avro - Nederland
In this article I want to show some intresting things from the amazing Avro tournament. The tournament was played in 1938 with 8 best players from the 1938 FIDE list! You can see the player's names:
Paul Keres
Reuben Fine
Salo Flohr
Mikhail Botvinnik
Max Euwe
Samuel Reshevsky
Alexander Alekhine
Jose Raul Capablanca
The chess tournament was organised by the Dutch radio company AVRO (we can see it also in tournaments name). Many great games were, like Botvinnik - Capablanca or Botvinnik - Aliekhine...
The rounds are played at many different venues, not only for example in Amsterdam. The venues you can see here:
| Round | Place | Date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Amsterdam | Nov. 6 |
| 2 | The Hague | Nov. 8 |
| 3 | Rotterdam | Nov. 10 |
| 4 | Groningen | Nov. 12 |
| 5 | Zwolle | Nov. 13 |
| 6 | Haarlem | Nov. 14 |
| 7 | Amsterdam | Nov. 15 |
| 8 | Utrecht | Nov. 17 |
| 9 | Arnhem | Nov. 19 |
| 10 | Breda | Nov. 20 |
| 11 | Rotterdam | Nov. 22 |
| 12 | The Hague | Nov. 24 |
| 13 | Leiden | Nov. 25 |
| 14 | Amsterdam | Nov. 27 |
Botvinnik before this game, played a very nice game against Alexander Aliekhine, the World Champion of this tournament.
After that two nice Botvinnik game, we can see a game from Reuben Fine against Salo Flohr, where White destroyed Black's king in a sharp French defence.
This tournament had 56 games, with 17 White wins, 32 draws and 7 Black wins. This breaks down to 59% for White and 41% for Black. As we can see, in ,,old'' times, having White was a nice advantage. In modern times, having White isn't a big advantage (except for Carslen, but he also wins with black).
After the 14 rounds (because the tournament was played with double round robin system) ended the tournament with nice games. You can see here the standings.
| No. | Name | State | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Paul Keres |  Estonia |
XX | 1= | == | == | 1= | == | 1= | == | 8½ |
| 2 | Reuben Fine |  United States |
0= | XX | 1= | 10 | 10 | 11 | == | 1= | 8½ |
| 3 | Mikhail Botvinnik |  Soviet Union |
== | 0= | XX | =0 | 1= | 1= | =1 | == | 7½ |
| 4 | Max Euwe |  Netherlands |
== | 01 | =1 | XX | 0= | 0= | 01 | 1= | 7 |
| 5 | Samuel Reshevsky | United States |
0= | 01 | 0= | 1= | XX | == | == | 1= | 7 |
| 6 | Alexander Aliekhine |  France |
== | 00 | 0= | 1= | == | XX | =1 | =1 | 7 |
| 7 | Jose Raul Capablanca |  Cuba |
0= | == | =0 | 10 | == | =0 | XX | =1 | 6 |
| 8 | Salo Flohr |  Czechoslovakia |
== | 0= | == | 0= | 0= | =0 | =0 | XX | 4½ |
The longest game was a 68-move win of Fine over Alekhine. The shortest game was a 19-move draw between Flohr and Fine.
That tournament was the all time (!) strongest tournament.The 8 strongest players on the FIDE rating list, in one tournament that's a record.
RELATED STUDY MATERIAL:
- Read about a tournament from the 20's in Dejan Bojkov's Great Tournaments of the Past - New York 1924;
