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My Best Games of Chess 1923-1937. Alekhine. Bell. First published 1939. Reprinted with memoir, 1947, 1949. pp 285. Descriptive Notation.
This book contains one hundred and twenty games from various tournaments, matches and simultaneous and blindfold exhibitions.
Part I, covering the period 1924-1927, gives twenty-four games from New York 1924, Paris 1925, Baden-Baden 1925, Semmering 1926, Dresden 1926, New York 1927 and the World Championship match with Capablanca at Buenos Aires in 1927.
Part II, covering the period 1929-1934, gives forty-two games from Bradley Beach 1929, Wiesbaden 1929, Berlin 1929, Amsterdam 1929, San Remo 1930, Hamburg 1930 (Olympiad?), Prague 1931, Bled 1931, London 1932, Berne 1932, Pasadena 1932, Folkestone 1933, Paris 1933, and the World Championship match with Bogoljubow in various Germany cities (Baden-Baden, Villingen, Pforzheim, Bayreuth, Kissigen, Berlin).
Part III, covering the period 1934-1937, gives thirty-eight games from Zürich 1934, the World Championship match with Dr. Euwe at various places in the Netherlands (Amsterdam, The Hague, Utrecht), Bad Nauheim 1936, Dresden 1936, Podebrad 1936, Nottingham 1936, Hastings 1936/7, Margate 1937, Kemeri 1937, Bad Nauheim 1937, and the return match for the World Championship with Dr. Euwe (again, various cities in the Netherlands).
Finally, part IV has sixteen exhibition games from the period 1924-33.
Alekhine's various volumes of selected games (in English this and its companion volume covering 1908-1923; there are several other selections in other languages e.g. Auf dem Wege zur Weltmeisterschaft 1923-1927, which among its one hundred games contains all of the games from the match with Capablanca) are justly famous for their depth and clarity of annotation. In keeping with the times, these are mostly verbal, which for most readers will be all to the good.
A good example of Alekhine's painstaking care with his annotations
is Game 44, against Vidmar at Bled 1931, which features a difficult
R+R v R+N ending. Alekhine, after citing his game against Lasker
at St. Petersburg 1914,
where he lost a diffcult, epic struggle against the then-world champion on
the wrong side of such an ending, then treats of two more games where he
exploits this advantage to win the full point. The full game scores of
these two are given, though only the endings are annotated. As Alekhine
says, I believe that these three examples taken as a whole represent
a rather important contribution to the chapter "Two Rooks against Rook and
Knight (with Pawns)."
The openings are many and varied, including a Hennig-Schara gambit (45), a Danish Gambit (106 — an exhibition game, of course), and three Alekhine's Defences, although of these two have Alekhine as White.
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Last changed: Sun Mar 3 11:49:38 CET 2019