A Century of Chess: Alekhine-Bogoljubow 1929 (Part 1)

These Alekhine-Bogoljubow matches have a bad reputation — which is undeserved, at least in the case of the first match. The chess world liked the idea of having Capablanca as the world champion and got obsessed with the prospect of a rematch between him and Alekhine. The fact that Alekhine seemed obviously to be dodging Capablanca threw shade on any of his other matches. 

But there was no real reason for Alekhine to play Capablanca right away. He had, after all, won the world championship fair and square. There was absolutely no stipulation giving Capablanca the right to a rematch. Bogoljubow, and also Nimzowitsch, had by this time more than deserved a shot at a world championship based on their tournament records. And the truth is that the match with Bogoljubow, a fighting player, was, in chess terms, much more interesting than a rematch with Capablanca would have been — with Alekhine and Capablanca tinkering with small improvements deep in theoretical lines and then trying to outplay one another in arcane endings. 

The decision to play the match with Bogoljubow was something of a surprise, but only for personal reasons. Alekhine and Bogoljubow were both difficult people, in different ways, and there was, as Alekhine put it, “an atmosphere of hate” between them whenever they appeared in the same tournaments. In his notes before the match, Alekhine wrote, "I have comprehended his fighting individuality better than that of any other chess master...yet our conception of life and our attitude toward combat are fundamentally different."  Bogoljubow was also unable to raise the full $10,000 stipulated in the 1922 London agreement, but Alekhine played him at a discounted rate of $6,000. And the match rewarded expectations. It was, as far as I can tell, the fightingest match in world championship history, with six of the first eight games, and 10 out of the remaining 17 ending in decisive results. Alekhine triumphantly wrote, "Even the most confirmed opponent of the contention that the game of chess is threatened with 'death through draws' could not have hoped for such a development in the progress of the match." 

This was also the first ‘hypermodern’ world championship. Alekhine had kept himself at arm’s length from the hypermodern revolution, contributing some opening ideas but focusing on practical play and beating Capablanca in their match along classical lines. Now that he could somewhat relax as world champion, though, Alekhine showed himself an enthusiastic student of hypermodernism. The match contested theoretical lines in the Nimzo-Indian and King’s Indian, as well as the Samisch Indian, which is really Alekhine’s invention and is fairly rarely played. The match, however, showed that black had real work to do in hypermodern openings — in the match, the players with black pieces, obtained dynamic, double-edged positions out of the opening but the white pieces dominated, with white winning ten of fifteen decisive games.

Alekhine drew first blood, sacrificing a pawn out of the opening in a Slav Defense and winning a classic attacking game. 

In Game 2, Alekhine on the black side of a Nimzo-Indian, came very close to taking a dominating lead. Likely unable to see a clear path to avoid perpetual check, he made a temporizing move on move 40 but that gave away the win. 

Game 3 was the closest thing to a grandmaster draw in the first part of the match, with Alekhine pressing in a tricky bishop endgame and Bogoljubow narrowly able to hold the draw.  The match had been all Alekhine so far, and he seemed to lead the play again in Game 4, finding a creative way to initiate an attack from the black side of a Nimzo-Indian, but Bogoljubow, just in time, hit on the critical defense, bringing his queen, all the way on the queenside, back around to protect his king. 

In Game 4, the white pieces continued to dominate, with Bogoljubow unwisely accepting an exchange down to a queenless middlegame and Alekhine efficiently converting the point. 

Alekhine wrote that he considered Game 5 "the most important so far played in the match." It seemed to move beyond early-match jitters and to establish Alekhine's superiority — especially in the endgame. But Bogoljubow, great fighter that he was, came back immediately with a near-replica of Alekhine's Game 5 win, trading queens out of the opening and dominating the resulting position. 

Bogoljubow's Game 6 win suddenly put Alekhine on the back foot psychologically, with Bogoljubow putting up an unexpectedly strong fight and Capablanca — with a case of sour grapes — sniffing, "Can you imagine B. winning two games from me or Dr. L so early?" In Game 7, which "from start to finish kept spectators under a high tension," as Alekhine wrote, Bogoljubow somewhat overestimated his position and gave Alekhine an enduring initiative. 

Game 8 was, really, the decisive game of the match. It was Bogoljubow's 'turn' to win as white — and the last game before an odd two-week hiatus — but, as Alekhine had predicted before the match, it was Bogoljubow's characteristic optimism that at last led to his undoing. In a pet line of Alekhine's, Bogoljubow over-pressed and Alekhine was immediately able to launch an "interesting" kingside attack breaking through with, it seemed, the bare minimum of force. 

The players now had a two-week break in order for Alekhine to attend the FIDE Congress. This was odd, although less odd at the time than it might have been later on, when world championship matches were on a more organized footing. The rest of the match would continue with fighting chess, but Bogoljubow never caught up to the lead Alekhine established with his win in the eighth game.

Sources: Alekhine's articles on the match are reprinted by Edward Winter. Alekhine annotates several of the games in My Best Games of Chess.