28 May 2006

Alekhine - Bogoljubov, Triberg 1921

The following position, from Alekhine's annotated brilliancies, was played against the fourth World Champion's future title challenger (1929 and 1934). Kotov also chose to include the game in his biography of Alekhine.

Of his 16th move, Alekhine wrote,

The reader will clearly perceive a similarity with other games (which also gained brilliancy prizes). The leading characteristic in these games is an unforeseen but immediately decisive attack. The chief point in these attacks lies in the fact that none of them was prepared in the immediate vicinity of its objective. On the contrary, all the preliminary maneuvers which tended to divert the adverse pieces from the defense of their King took place in the center or on the opposite wing.

Those other games (the italics are mine) were Alekhine - Sterk, 1921 Budapest; Alekhine - Rubinstein, 1923 Karlsbad; and Alekhine - Selesniev, 1922 Pistyan. In 'My Best Games of Chess 1908-1923', the game against Selesniev was not marked as having received a brilliancy prize. I'll add it to my list as though it had been so marked.

Triberg 1921
Bogoljubov, Efim

Alekhine, Alexander
(After 11...d5-c4(xP))
[FEN "r2q1rk1/pb3ppp/1pn1pn2/8/2p4Q/2N3P1/PP2PPBP/R1B2RK1 w - - 0 12"]

12.Rd1! Qc8 Alekhine:

Forced. If 12...Qe7 13.Bg5 h6 14.Bxf6 Qxf6 15.Qxf6 gxf6 16.Rd7.

13.Bg5! Nd5

On 13...Nd7 14.Ne4, with a strong attack for White.

14.Nxd5 exd5 15.Rxd5! Nb4 16.Be4!! f5 (16...h6 17.Bxh6; or 16...g6 17.Bf6 Nxd5 18.Bxd5) 17.Bxf5! Rxf5 18.Rd8+ and White won easily. The '!'s are all Alekhine's.

To play through the complete game see...

Alexander Alekhine vs Efim Bogoljubov, Triberg 1921
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1012080

...on Chessgames.com.

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