A Century of Chess: Vilnius 1912
The last stop on Rubinstein’s European tour of 1912 - and his fourth straight tournament victory. There’s a pleasing west-east flow to the tournaments: he started the year in San Sebastián in Spain at what would now be called a super-tournament, taking first place thanks to a tense last-round victory over Nimzowitsch; then dominated the field at the very strong international tournament at Bad Pistyan in Slovakia; then shared first with Duras at the German Congress at Breslau (now Poland); and to finish the year took clear first thanks to a torrid finish at the All-Russian Masters tournament in Vilnius. Fatigue seemed clearly to be affecting Rubinstein’s play in the early rounds at Vilnius: he lost to two tailenders, von Freymann and Alapin, and Lasker, following the tournament closely, assumed that Rubinstein’s energy was drained. "Rubinstein won't wrest more from his tortured brain than third place," he wrote in Pester Lloyd. But Rubinstein proved to be unbeatable in 1912, he won four straight down the stretch and coasted in his last games to a first-place finish. As a fitting symmetry to round out the year, the critical game was again a tense win over Nimzowitsch.
Rubinstein is one of these players, like Keres, Polugaevsky, or Ivanchuk, who have a reputation for weak nerves - for failing in big games. That wasn’t the case, though, for Rubinstein in 1912 and from a sporting point of view Vilnius was probably his greatest achievement.
Whether it was because of fatigue or a need to make up last ground in the cross-table, Rubinstein’s play in this tournament wasn’t as perfectionist, deterministic, and, dare I say, monotonous as usual - the middlegames were extended longer than in the majority of his games and he was more willing to mix it up tactically - and he showed himself to be, if not indestructible, then at least among the world’s best as a tactician, winning a series of tense encounters in the late rounds of the tournament and pulling ahead of his chief rival Bernstein.
By 1912, Nimzowitsch (then 25 years old) and Alekhine (at 19) had already emerged as the future of Russian chess, but at Vilnius, they disappointed, both finishing out of the money - although winning some anthologizable games.
They were overshadowed by a cadre of more obscure Russians - Stefan Levitsky, Gregory Levenfish, Alexander Flamberg, and Sergei von Freymann - all of whom showed themselves to be stupendous tacticians. Of that group, only Levenfish went on to have a long chess career - the others had their playing foreshortened, in various ways, by World War I and the Revolution. In particular, the Urals player Levitsky had the result of his career, finishing clear third, behind only Rubinstein and Bernstein.
Fyodor Dus-Chotimirski described him as being "a peculiar, whole-hearted, and original Russian man whose chess talent was phenomenal." He amazed Dus-Chotimirski by, around this time, swimming in an ice-hole in the freezing cold.
Levenfish announced himself with a pair of brilliant attacks, against Alapin and Flamberg. Although he would be an inconspicuous member of the international elite, he would be one of the world’s top players for the next three decades.
In contrast to the German Congress at Breslau, which featured only one younger German player (Carls), Vilnius revealed the Russian Empire to be brimming with talent. It was a sign of the strength of the field that Alapin and Salwe - two veteran international masters - were all the way at the bottom of the pack. Meanwhile, Efim Bogoljubov made his début, taking second place in the Hauptturnier (the undercard of the main tournament). What’s clear from Vilnius is that chess was in the process of becoming a Russian sport even before World War I.
Sources: Vilnius is a bit of a tough tournament given that a large number of game scores are missing. The most detailed account is in Skoldager and Nielsen's Aron Nimzowitsch: On The Road To Chess Mastery, which includes Nimzowitsch's characteristically hilarious reporting on his own games. Donaldson and Minev follow Rubinstein's progression through the tournament in Akiva Rubinstein: The Uncrowned King. batgirl has a terrific essay on Stefan Levitsky here. Alekhine annotates his game against Nimzowitsch here.
