A Century of Chess: London/Bern 1932

In 1929, Alekhine defended his world championship like a mortal — with Bogoljubow keeping pace with him for much of the match until Alekhine surged ahead. But after that Alekhine started a tournament run that has a claim to being the greatest streak of dominance by any chess player ever. Between San Remo and Bled, he scored +29=13-0. At London 1932 he went +7=4-0 and at Bern +11=3-1. If we add in his scores at Pasadena and Mexico City later that year, that brings his tally in the six tournaments to +62=24-2, a dizzying score that is among the all-time greatest streaks.

London and Bern were real international events — Bern especially — but they both had the sensation of the strongman hitting the bell to the top of the tower. Alekhine seemed to just compress more kinetic power into his play than anybody else did, to have a deeper knowledge of the opening, and to calculate in complicated positions with more accuracy. In the game with Winter, he found an unexpected bid for the initiative in an opening he had studied deeply and then overpowered careful defense with successive waves of an attack. Against a tricky opening from Tartakower, he found a clear strategic idea and dominated the middlegame. Against Koltanowski, careful defense was once again unavailing as a deeply-calculated sacrifice produced an unexpected angle of attack. 

At Bern he imposed clarity against Khan's clever attempt to mix things up, and made his chief rival Salo Flohr look amateurish. 

From a sporting point of view the tournaments were really a battle for second place, and Salo Flohr continued his year of wonders by taking clear second at London and shared second at Bern. Flohr’s chess looks like it’s in slow motion next to Alekhine’s, but Flohr played accurately and elegantly and with a beauty of his own. It was his misfortune that he wasn’t able to put Max Euwe away in their match that year. Had he won instead of tied, he might well have staked out his claim as being Alekhine’s worthiest challenger and secured a match within the next couple of years. 

BERN:Sources: Alekhine annotates several of the games from these tournaments in My Best Games of Chess 1908-37.