A Century of Chess: New York 1927
1927 was a very good year — the height of the Roaring Twenties. And it was an especially good year in New York — the year when the Babe Ruth Yankees won 110 games and swept the World Series. It was good times, fast living, and if an international chess tournament didn’t attract quite the same fanfare as Ruth’s 60 home runs it was somehow of the same ilk — and Capablanca was, as Alekhine later wrote, the suitable world champion for this light and superficial era.
Capablanca’s play in this tournament is meant to be appreciated much the way you might sit in the bleachers and applaud a superstar. He won the tournament by two-and-a-half points and without ever breaking a sweat. He seemed completely dominant in all facets of the game — beating Vidmar in simple positions, Spielmann and Marshall in tactical complications, and Nimzowitsch, as Ray Keene wrote, "as if he had carefully read My System and then used all the theories contained therein against their inventor." As it turns out, though, this is the last time we see Capablanca as God clearly intended him to be — as the invincible world champion sitting confidently on the throne. The tournament would be remembered principally for giving him a false sense of confidence: he simply assumed that he would roll over Alekhine in their world championship much as he rolled over the competition here.
The obvious storyline of the tournament was the rivalry between Capablanca and Alekhine, with Alekhine having already challenged Capablanca to a match later in the year, but, like at a prize fight weigh-in, the two of them kept a wary distance here. Capablanca won a convincing round five game just to show who was champ and then the two them took short draws the rest of the way.
The more important rivalry, actually, was between Alekhine and Nimzowitsch for the second place spot. Alekhine was the challenger presumptive, but Nimzowitsch was the coming man with his victories at Marienbad and Dresden and a second-place finish here would have established him as Capablanca’s rightful challenger. He seemed to have that in hand, starting with six points of the first nine games while Alekhine was a point-and-a-half behind him, but Alekhine woke up to take second place by a full point and set the stage for the world championship match.
Had Nimzowitsch taken second, he likely would not have had a championship match with Capablanca — he had issued a challenge, but, as Alekhine wrote, it was "platonic," meaning that he didn't have the funds raised. That finish, however, might have upset the apple cart for Alekhine's own challenge and altered the course of chess history. Instead, everything went according to plan for Alekhine. Not only did Capablanca badly underestimate him, but he used the opportunity of New York for an astonishingly deep study of Capablanca's play, concluding that the "general shouts of praise with which the quality of Capablanca's performance in New York was greeted" were vastly exaggerated. Capablanca was getting by on second-best moves and intuition and had almost stopped treating chess as an art. Alekhine became convinced that, by playing for perfection rather than mere excellence, he could prove that Capablanca was, contrary to all appearances, vulnerable.
As for the rest of the crosstable, Vidmar almost might not have been there for his Giri-ian score of 14 draws out of 20 games.
Spielmann was slightly overmatched in this company and found himself at the receiving end of the brilliancy prize game against Capablanca.
The surprise, and disappointment, of the tournament was Frank Marshall’s abysmal showing. Marshall had been such a great player, a mainstay of elite chess for a quarter-century and had very nearly made it into the winner’s circle as recently as 1924, when he was also playing ‘host’ to an international tournament, but in the intervening three years age had caught up with him and he had become the equivalent of a ‘local player’ for his adversaries to run up their scores against.
Sources: Alexander Alekhine's New York: 1927 is one of the more interesting chess books in existence. It's a rare glimpse of the thought processes of a player at the absolute highest level, as he really tries to comb through the shortcomings of his opponents. There's also a collection of contemporary pen portraits of the tournament, but it's really only interesting as a sample of 1920s sports writing.
