An Euwe Game For Every Week of Spring #4
Welcome to week 4 and happy Easter!
Today I would like to go over a few games that show Euwe's knack for getting into imbalanced positions. Part of being able to win games is the ability to create imbalanced positions (ones where each player has different objectives) and understand the created imbalances better than your opponent.
First we have a game Euwe played as part of a match between him and Edgar Colle, this match took place eight years after his match with Reti and Euwe was clearly an even better player by this time. In this game we will see that he enters into a now typical kind of position in the Nimzo-Indian where white has a large center but a damaged pawn structure. The idea in these types of positions is that if white has the large center then they should try and create an attack on the king before black has time to create counter play on the queen side. Unfortunately Colle never gets his counter play and goes down without a fight.
Here's the final tactic of the game:
Here's the full game:
The match against Colle concluded with a score of 5-1/2 to 1/2, ouch! But this match was simply a training match to prepare Euwe for his real opponent (who he played over Easter): Efim Bogoljubow.
The match against Bogoljubow did not end with a triumphant Euwe (the final score was 5-1/2 to 4-1/2) but it was still an impressive outing for him since Bogoljubow would be playing for the World championship against Alekhine just the very next year. The match between Euwe and Bogoljubow was actually to decide who would be FIDE Champion. Alekhine himself derided this as something of little significance saying, "The idea was to determine the new FIDE world champion. [...] FIDE’s fifth Congress awarded him the title 'Champion of FIDE'. Well, Bogoljubow was also not accepted as a true world champion then either."
Despite Alekhine's condescension, the quality of the chess on display was decent.
First a strategic puzzle:
If you're having trouble keep in mind what black is threatening to do after the exchange of pawns.
Here's the full game:
So there you have it, Euwe still isn't at World Championship quality seeing as he lost to Bogoljubow (who would lose to Alekhine quite badly). But who isn't a fan of underdogs?
I'll see you all next time!
Here's the previous entry in this series.
Sources: Euwe vs Colle Match (1928), Euwe vs Bogoljubow FIDE Championship (1928), FIDE Championship (1928) - Edward Winter
