A Century of Chess: San Remo 1930

What are the greatest periods of dominance in chess history? Morphy's 1858 European tour; Lasker from 1907-1909; Capablanca in his six-year stretch without a loss; Tal's run to the world championship; Fischer from 1970-1972; Kasparov in the late '80s/early '90s; Carlson for most of the 2010s into the 2020s. Alekhine's run in the early '30s, though, is very much in the conversation. Chess players would argue seriously about whether his +13 result here was better than his +15 performance at Bled the next year, but it's like comparing the Mona Lisa with the Sistine Chapel. 

During this period, Alekhine was simply at another level from everyone else — including his closest competitors. He was playing with ferocity, just somehow packing more energy into his games than anyone else could manage.

In the selected games, he wins in basically every phase of the game — getting something from nothing in a featureless position against Yates; punishing an inconspicuous opening by Nimzowitsch to defeat his closest rival by move 30; rewriting the textbooks in a technical ending against Vidmar; and trading to a pawn-down endgame against Tartakower where he's actually winning. 

This should have been an extraordinary tournament for Nimzowitsch at the peak of his career. He had beaten Capablanca the year before, this was his chance to chase after Alekhine. And he did his part scoring +6, but there was no chance of catching Alekhine. And Nimzo’s score was a little hollow — both Colle and Yates missed strong chances against him. 

By 1930, the chess world had moved on from Akiba Rubinstein, but he was of course still an incredibly strong player and demonstrated that he couldn't be overlooked with a third-place finish here. 

The tournament was the high-water mark for Carl Ahues. He's one of these players you would never think about unless you happen to be going through an enormous number of games from this period — he was probably the strongest active German player in a period when German chess was uncharacteristically weak. The brilliancy prize, meanwhile, went — fittingly in the first major tournament held in Italy — to Mario Monticelli, who has left very little other imprint in chess history. 

Sources: simaginfan has a very extensive series on San Remo here and here and including the photos reproduced here. Alekhine annotates several of his games from the tournament in My Best Games of Chess.