A Century of Chess: Alekhine-Bogoljubow 1929 (Part 2)
The match quieted down a little after the torrid pace of the first eight games — but only by a little. Now it was five decisive results in eight games, as opposed to six. And, after the wild start, the dynamic for the rest of the match was set — Alekhine had an apparently solid lead, but Bogoljubow, ever optimistic, ever pugnacious, kept chipping away at it.
Alekhine had finally seemed to seize control of the match by taking a two-point edge with his win in Game 8. This was just before a strange two-week interlude that Alekhine had insisted on so that he could attend the FIDE Congress.
The players had a getting-to-know-you draw in Game 9 — one of very few placid draws in the match — and then the scoring started up again. In the first part of the match, white had been dominant, winning in the first five decisive results, but now, curiously, the balance shifted, with black winning four in a row. Alekhine had struggled on the black side of hypermodern setups and now he jettisoned those for the Cambridge Springs, which had gotten a workout in the Capablanca match. That served him well in Game 10 where he put steady pressure on white in the endgame and finally winning after a Bogoljubow miscue.
In the wild Game 11, Alekhine sacrificed two pawns for a dangerous attack and eventually managed to regain material but without delivering a knockout blow.
Alekhine won without much trouble in Game 12 — Bogoljubow sacrificed a pawn and then a piece out of the opening but Alekhine beat off the attack easily.
The theme of the match had become Bogoljubow’s optimism. In Games 10 and 12, that optimism worked against him — with Bogoljubow taking undue chances. But, now, trailing by four points, Bogoljubow showed off the virtues of his approach. In Game 13, he invaded white’s position and won with a cute tactic. In Game 14, the players reached an absolutely dead-drawn-looking position with opposite-colored bishops, but Bogoljubow kept pressing and eventually won in a marathon endgame.
In Game 15, Bogoljubow sacrificed a pawn out of the opening for long-term compensation but eventually Alekhine returned the material for a drawn position. Alekhine was on the back foot in this stage of the match, with Bogoljubow having won the last two decisive games, but, in Game 16, Bogoljubow chose a bad plan out of the opening and mulishly gave away a pawn. It was a curiosity of the match that the scoring always seemed to come in streaks of two, and in Game 17, Alekhine opened up to a four-point lead again, obtaining a dominant space advantage out of the opening and beating off a Bogoljubow pawn sacrifice.
