The match Nimzowitsch-Aljechin.

Introduction.

After his tournament victory in Carlsbad 1929 (ahead of Capablanca, Spielmann, Rubinstein, Vidmar and Euwe, Bogoljubov came eighth) Nimzowitsch wrote: "The chess-world is obliged to organize a match between the world champion and the winner of the Carlsbad tournament, indeed, this is a moral obligation. If on the other hand the chess world would stay deaf to its obligation, that would amount to an absolutely unforgivable omission, carrying with it a heavy burden of guilt. (N1) Nimzowitsch struck this moral note because he lacked funds and he was not practical enough to find sponsors himself, apart from that Alekhine didn't much like the idea of playing a match against an opponent that might take away his cherished title of world champion. Besides Nimzowitsch, a revanche-match was also not granted to Capablanca. A month after the Carlsbad tournament the match Alekhine-Bogoljubov started, won by the former with +11 -5 =9. Five years later this match was repeated and Aljechin showed that the result had been no accident, even though he took it a bit more easy: +8 -3 =15. A year later Nimzowitsch was dead.

So no match Aljechin-Nimzowitsch, and together with Botwinnik-Keres and Fischer-Karpov this is no doubt the most exciting match that has not been played. In the course of their careers Alekhine and Nimzowitsch played 21 games, exactly the same number as in Fischer-Spassky, Reykjavik 1972, and the idea of this article was to collect this material.

You can play back these games on the Chuss Tutor Java Applet. The applet takes some time to load.
You can download these games in PGN-format.

(N1) Carslbad International Chess Tournament. Aron Nimzovich. Dover 1981, Translation Jim Marfia, page 9.

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