A Century of Chess: Dresden 1926

A surprise for me in playing through the tournaments of the 1920s is how long some of the players I think of as stalwarts of the era took to arrive on the scene. Spielmann was a confirmed middle or bottom-of-the-packer until his breakout at Semmering. Vidmar, busy with his university work, only played in one tournament before 1926. Nimzowitsch — the ‘crown prince of chess’ — had a checkered tournament record, until, at Marienbad 1925 and Dresden 1926, he began to demonstrate his true class, the fruit of the solitary work he had undertaken getting somewhere close to the theoretical heart of the game. 

At Dresden in particular it’s possible to see the insights that made players of later generations, Petrosian and Keene for instance, simply delirious in talking about the depth of Nimzowitsch’s conceptions and the very beautiful, very paradoxical truths that he seemed to discover about chess. The games against Johner and Rubinstein are of a higher order. Against Johner, Nimzowitsch neglects ordinary principles of development, instead spending three tempi to bring the Queen to h7 (!) at which point white’s position swiftly collapses. Against Rubinstein, Nimzowitsch played what he regarded as the best game of his career, finding an endless sequence of creative maneuvers to initiate a kingside attack and then with the decisive blow coming completely unexpectedly from the other side of the board. 

Alekhine played very well, once again asserting his claim to be the rightful challenger for the world championship. If there was any lingering doubt, he won overpoweringly against his only other legitimate rival, Rubinstein. An interesting feature of Alekhine’s play in this tournament was to take exchanges early — belying his reputation for baroque complexity and instead outplaying his opponents with sparse material on the board. 

Alekhine narrowly missed a win in his individual game with Nimzowitsch, but actually it wouldn't have mattered anyway — with Nimzowitsch winning the tournament by a stunning 1.5 points. 

Rubinstein was fading out of relevance but was still a top contender for first prizes in international tournaments. His win over Johner, though a flawed game, exhibits the elegance of his style — particularly the nonchalant retreat 21…Be8. 

Sources: Nimzowitsch annotates his games in My System, Alekhine's his in My Best Games of Chess.