A Century of Chess: Alekhine-Bogoljubow (Part 3)

I've been spending far longer than I meant to on the Alekhine-Bogoljubow match because ... it was a really good match! It was certainly the fighting-ist championship match since Lasker-Steinitz 1894 and may well have been the fighting-ist match of modern chess.

The basic dynamic of the match was of Alekhine like a helicopter slowly lifting off and Bogoljuow clawing at the underside and refusing to be dislodged.

After a tumultuous series in the early games of the match, Alekhine finally took a two-point lead in Games 7-8. That seemed to widen to an insuperable four-point advantage after wins in Games 10 and 12, but, like silly putty resisting being scraped off the floor, Bogoljubow scored consecutive wins in Games 13 and 14 to cut Alekhine's lead in half. 

On the back foot psychologically, Alekhine won in Games 16 and 17 to, apparently, once more put the match away. But, with the match changing venue from Germany to the Netherlands, Bogoljubow once more made it interesting, switching to 1.e4 having after played the entirety of the match in queen's pawn openings and staying a steady step ahead of Alekhine. 

This would, however, be Bogoljubow's last win of the match. Game 19 is a famous ending 'tragicomedy.' Outplayed in the middlegame, Bogoljubow got a respite when Alekhine's technique deserted him and he had the draw in hand but blundered with 70...Kg4?? losing in a rook v. pawn endgame. 

If Game 19 was sloppy chess, Game 20 was sloppy, imperfect chess as well — but of a completely higher order. With both players attacking, Bogoljubow got the upper hand, reaching a position where he could only win or draw. But just before the time control he failed to find the quiet move 36.Bb3!! which wins through a series of dizzying tactics. 

The back-to-back disasters in Games 19 and 20 seemed to dampen even Bogoljubow's imperturbable optimism. He chose a bad opening plan in Game 21 and was ground down without much difficulty. In Game 22, Alekhine finished off the scoring for the match, finding a new idea in a Steinitz Defense and gradually taking charge of the position as black. 

Bogoljubow was now down six full points, but like Monty Python's black knight still kept fighting. 

In Game 23 he got the better of Alekhine in a double-edged rook and minor pieces endgame but his advantage wasn't enough to win. In Game 24, Alekhine batted away a hack attack and, although Bogoljubow never stopped attacking — advancing his king up the board even with queens and a pair of rooks still in the game — he couldn't make progress. Game 25 encapsulated the entire flavor of the match. Needing a draw, Alekhine instead played to win but overextended himself. Instead of picking off a free pawn, Bogoljubow complicated in turn and found himself needing to make great moves to defend. He found those moves and it fell to Alekhine to narrowly hold the balance in the endgame and to score the draw that secured him the match. 

Alekhine was full of praise for Bogoljubow afterwards, saying, "He possesses inexhaustible fantasy. There is no position where he finds nothing...Psychologically, Bogoljubow merits only respect, for he always remained very cool-blooded even if the situation in the battle was by no means fortunate for him." It had sometimes felt as if Bogoljubow was doing all the playing in the match, with Alekhine as his foil — and the match turned on Bogoljubow's optimism and his constant pushing-of-the-envelope with his opponent forced simply to find accurate moves — but it was, of course, a remarkable achievement for Alekhine. He had faced down a dangerous, inexhaustible opponent and had proven his ability, between the Capablanca and Bogoljubow matches, to beat the very best in the world in two completely different types of chess. As he remarked after the match, "Everything that has been said recently about the draw death in chess in senseless." It was possible to play with abandon at the very highest levels — "it is always a case of being hurled into an unexpected adventure," Alekhine said of Bogoljubow — and Alekhine had shown that he was the world champion in both 'rational' and 'irrational' chess.