Alekhine At San Remo 1930. One Of Chess History's Greatest Performances. Part Two.
Afternoon again! Back with part two ( kind of like it says in the title!!) of The San Remo Massacre.
The link for the photos - remembered this time!
The day after his long endgame against Vidmar, we got another example of Alekhine's technical abilities at the time. ( Why does nobody ever talk about how good he became in endgames? It was an area he worked hard on, and he became VERY good!)
His opponent, Geza Maroczy, wasn't exactly a weak endgame player. The decisive mistake - as in the Vidmar game - was a push of the h-Pawn!
Well, two long endgames took a bit of a toll, and in the next game Alekhine took a rest. Spielmann did indeed get to castle, and we got a quick 'Grandmaster Draw' - something very rare in Alekhine's praxis. Spielmann was a strong player - and somewhat misunderstood in my opinion. He may have started out as an all guns blazing attacking player 'the last knight of the King's gambit' and all that, but he developed into a tough all-round player. A 50% score against Capablanca, just -1 against Lasker, and he was the only player who played at both San Remo and Bled 1931 who didn't lose to Alekhine at his peak. Just thought I would mention it!!
Interestingly the next game came under the scrutiny of the young Botvinnik. The version of the Tournament Book that I have
includes his notes to the game. Alekhine himself annotated it twice - once in 'My Best Games' and also - the notes I give here (because they were written nearer the time which makes them interesting in themselves) - in Schweizerische Schachzeitung. Curiously there are actually three versions of the score, as I explain in the notes. The shortest version was in My Best Games. Alekhine was known for doctoring his games scores now and again, but this discrepancy is a hard one to explain!
Round 8 saw him up against Tartakower.
Again the game makes it into 'My Best Games' - from which I take the notes, and again he wins in the endgame. A tough struggle.
The round nine game was against Carl Ahues,
and is the feature game in part one.
So, onto round ten, which by a stroke of fortune was intended to be the feature game here.
One advantage of studying tournament books and the modern 'complete games' collections is that you get to study neglected games. This next one has never been featured anywhere. I have never seen it mentioned, and there are no annotations of it that I have ever seen, and no comments on any of the online sources that I have looked at.
Well, when I got hold of the version of the tournament book that I have this game fascinated me! ( LOTS of margin notes for this one.) One of the all time greats at his peak against the player who finished last. You would expect a quick knock-out -or easy technical crush - but the opposite was true.
His opponent was a fascinating chess figure - one example of how the changing geopolitical map has affected players.
I always think of him as Max Romih - as he was for much of his career. Why that changed is explained here :- https://unoscacchista.com/2019/04/24/r-max-romih-leterno-secondo/
It's a great example of a great player fighting to beat a lesser light who is putting up tough resistance. Alekhine does everything! A small surprise in the opening, creative maneuvers in the middle game, and some psychology., He gets the Bishop Pair and attacking chances, and makes what he can of them. Still Romih keeps fighting!! Finally Romih cracks in the face of the relentless creativity and pressure, but he had pushed one of the greats at the height of his powers to the absolute maximum ( pun intended!) Bravo Max. What a struggle!!
That's all you get today! I am away for a few days, but next time I will be back with Alekhine's last five games from the tournament, and some thoughts on the header picture from part one - Alekhine and wife at San Remo.
See you all then! Cheers!
