This is THE game, isn't it? One of those timeless battles that wins the hearts of many a chess player and turns them into a chess lover! 30. Ba3!! is something I've read in a few books.
But, let's look at something earlier...
I don't want to dwell too much on the early, early moves - after all, this game is from a time when not as many lines were 'known' and I'm no expert at openings...
But, what about 12. Bb2? Anyone understand what Botvinnik's plan is with this move? He doesn't move that Bishop again until the aforementioned Ba3. So, why does he do this instead of Qd3, threatening the black Knight?
Today's game is a rather famous battle between Mikhail Botvinnik and Jose Capablanca, from the 1938 AVRO tournament. The following photograph was taken at a match in Moscow, two years earlier (Capablana is on the left):
From the Wikipedia:
The AVRO tournament was a chess tournament held in the Netherlands in 1938, sponsored by the Dutch broadcasting company AVRO. The event was a double round-robin tournament. The eight players generally regarded as the strongest in the world took part: World Champion Alexander Alekhine, former champions José Raúl Capablanca and Max Euwe, future champion Mikhail Botvinnik and challengers Paul Keres, Reuben Fine, Samuel Reshevsky and Salo Flohr. Keres and Fine tied for first place, with Keres winning on tiebreak by virtue of his 1½-½ score in their individual games. Capablanca, who had only lost 26 tournament games over a span of 29 years, lost four games in this event. He had suffered a mild stroke during this tournament and his ill health was largely responsible for this poor performance.
The tournament was apparently organised in the hope that it would provide a challenger to Alekhine, but it was not an official Candidates Tournament, and World War II dashed any hopes of a championship match for years to come. However, when FIDE organised its 1948 match tournament for the world title after Alekhine's death in 1946, it invited the six surviving AVRO participants (Capablanca had also died), except that Flohr was replaced by Vasily Smyslov.
About this game, Garry Kasparov wrote: "... Botvinnik played what was altogether the 'game of his life' against Capablanca. It was not just that it was judged the most brilliant in the tournament and to be worth two first prizes, but it was even suggested that, by analogy with the 'immortal' and 'evergreen' games, it should be called 'peerless' or 'classical'!"