Andre Schulz - The Big Book of World Chess Championships: 46 Title Fights

The Big Book of World Chess Championships

Andre Schulz

The Big Book of World Chess Championships

46 Title Fights from Steinitz to Carlsen

New in Chess 2016

Rolf, we are missing you

2016 New In Chess

Translated from Das groe Buch der Schach-Weltmeisterschaften (Schulz, New in Chess 2015) by Ian Adams

Published by New In Chess, Alkmaar, The Netherlands

www.newinchess.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission from the publisher.

Photos: New in Chess archives

Cover design: Ron van Roon

Production: Harald Keilhack

Supervision: Peter Boel

Proofreading: Ian Adams, Harald Keilhack

Have you found any errors in this book?

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ISBN: 978-90-5691-635-0

Symbols

The chessboard with its coordinates:

King

Queen

Rook

Bishop

Knight

x capturing

+ check

# checkmate

! good move

!! excellent move

!? interesting move

?! dubious move

? bad move

?? blunder

= balanced position

+ White has a decisive advantage

+ Black has a decisive advantage

White to move

Black to move

Preface

There are numerous ways to relate to chess. There are many people who do not even play chess but derive pleasure from, perhaps, collecting beautiful chess sets, chess books or stamps which are related to chess. Chess can be played solely as a pastime or as a competitive sport.

The history of such chess contests stretches far back into the past. But at the latest from the end of the 19th century matches were played between the best players in the world for the World Chess Championship. After this the history of such World Championships did not always run in a straight line, but the tradition has lasted until the present day.

Countless books have been written about the individual World Championships, in which, as was natural, the games of the matches were at the focal point of contemplation. So far, however, there have scarcely been any comparative studies of the various World Championships. This book is intended to plug that gap.

Here it is not the games which are in the foreground and also not the course of the contests, but rather what was happening beside the board: what were the venues and what were the circumstances for the World Championship encounters? Under what conditions and according to what rules were they played? What plots were hatched before and during the competitions? Some of the matches turned into real psychological warfare and from time to time lifelong enmity was a further result of the matches.

When describing the struggles beside the board, I have tried to limit myself to the portrayal of the facts such as they have been published in the sources which were available to me. As I did so, I did not want to take sides for or against any participant or to influence the forming of the readers own opinion. Should any participant or person mentioned in these pages feel that he or she has been wrongly or unjustly portrayed, then that has happened purely due to a lack of ability on my part, it is in no way a question of bad faith.

In the past, most reflections on World Chess Championships focussed above all on the players who were contesting the matches. Their biographies, which have been presented here in compact form, offer an insight into their era and the then prevailing living conditions. The best chess players in the world were born in different countries and into differing social backgrounds. Many began their life in poverty and earned a certain material security through their knowledge of chess. Others were born into well-off houses and died in misery. Wilhelm Steinitz, the first World Champion, was born in pitiful circumstances and eked out the whole of his life on the verges of total poverty. Nowadays the World Chess Champion becomes a millionaire.

But actually many other chess lovers have made perhaps an even greater contribution than the World Champions themselves, and they have done so through their efforts to bring about the matches. First and foremost, one must mention the patrons and the sponsors who provided the prize money and who assumed the costs of the staging of the contests. The players were supported by seconds, whose work has often not received sufficient recognition. The arbiters assured that the course of the match followed the rules.

So, in this description of the history of World Championships I have attempted to name as many as possible of those who took part directly or indirectly. Unfortunately many hard-working chess lovers who also participated in the organisation of the World Championships were never named in the sources. In addition I have taken pains to describe the numerous links between the world of chess and the world at large in order to demonstrate how much the game of chess and its outstanding connoisseurs are to be understood as a component of our culture.

Nevertheless, a book about the World Chess Championships totally without games would be something of a rarity and therefore I have chosen from each World Championship a single game, added to it contemporary and also more recent comments and checked the variations which have been given with strong up-to-date chess programs and engines such as Houdini or Stockfish. Where necessary I have added further variations and explanations according to my own understanding and from time to time I have corrected mistakes in old analysis with the help of the chess engines. This also allowed many an interesting discovery to be made, since many of the WCh games had no longer been looked at in depth for many years and now and then appear somewhat different in the light of present-day computer analysis.

I hope to demonstrate with this description of the history of the World Chess Championships that the game of chess has many more sides to offer than the presentation of the games and that the struggles for first place in the world ranking list of chess were far removed from happening simply at the board. Chess lovers who take an interest in the history of their sport will hopefully find a few stories which are new to them. It would please me even more if many a reader who has as yet had little contact with the game of chess could perhaps be bitten by the chess bug as a result of this book.

May I thank Johannes Fischer for moral support, proof reading, motivational help and access to his library; may I also thank Michael Dombrowsky, who made some rare books available to me. Rolf Gehrke and particularly Thomas Stark have been of great assistance to me with numerous comments and proof reading.

Hamburg, June 2015

Andre Schulz

Introduction

There is no doubt that chess is a very special game. It was invented around 500 A.D. in India, first of all as a game for four people chaturanga. In the 6th century an Indian ambassador brought the game as a present from his king Divsaraman to the Persian court of Chosraus I. The word chess (from the Persian shah = king) is a reminder of its Persian past. Even back then in Persia the game fascinated all those who came into contact with it. After the Arabs conquered Persia, many of them too were infected by the chess virus. There soon arose a literature with pretty chess puzzles and even already professional players. Via the Arabs the game of chess spread as far as Europe, following two routes. Via Spain and Italy it reached the countries of south, central and western Europe and the game came to Russia through the Caucasus.