The Historian wrote:
Taylor Kingston wrote:
On Nov 10, 9:05 am, "The Historian" wrote:
Taylor Kingston wrote:
On Nov 10, 12:56 am, "Louis Blair" wrote:
Taylor Kingston wrote (9 Nov 2006 11:28:22 -0800):

7 ... Hartston calls Alekhine's introduction to his book of the
7 1927 New York tournament "one of the greatest character
7 assassinations in chess literature" for its belittlement of
7 what was generally regarded as Capablanca's greatest
7 tournament triumph. ...
_
Is a translation of this introduction available?

It was written in English, I believe. What other languages it may
have published in, I do not know.

According to Levy's book Learn Chess From The World Champions, it was
first published in German. It only appeared in English with publication
of Levy's book, in 1979.

In that case, I stand corrected. I had thought it was first published
in English, like Alekhine's book of the 1924 tournament.

Or so says Levy in his book.

The book is something of a
collector's item, apparently. Alekhine's book of NY 1924 is still
widely available, but NY 1927 seems quite rare.
The gist of the intro, according to Hartston, was that Capa's
overwhelming victory in 1927 was not as convincing as it looked. Capa
scored 14-6 (+8 =12 -0) and finished clear first, well ahead of
Alekhine (11½-8½), Nimzovitch (10½-9½), Vidmar (10-10), Spielmann
(8-12) and Marshall (6-14). But Alekhine claimed that the whole thing
was stage-managed to make Capa look good. The field was carefully
chosen to include only masters who had never won even a single game
against him (not quite true; Marshall had won twice, though losing 15),
and deliberately excluded Lasker, Bogolyubov, Rubinstein, Tarrasch, and
Réti, all of whom had beaten Capa and/or finished ahead of him in
recent events.

The suggestion that Tarrasch was deliberately excluded because he had
beaten Capa seems like a stretch on Alekhine's part. Was Tarrasch
considered a top-level master in 1927?

Then Alekhine went on to point out specific flaws in Capablanca's NY
1927 games, and more general shortcomings of his style, finally
concluding "The New York tournament of 1927 will go down in history as
the point of departure leading to that Buenos Aires spectacular which
finally shattered the harmful legend of Capablanca, the human chess
machine."

This is a different translation than the excerpt in Levy's book,
although the meaning is the same.

Of course, all this was written *after* Alekhine had won the world
title from Capa. Had he failed, no doubt the tournament book would have
had a markedly different tone.-



Speaking of "markedly different tone", I'm pleased that chess finally
broke into a thread dominated by Robtroll and Innes. Thank you, Taylor.

Actually,
I began the discussion on Alekhine. Histrollian would not notice that
though. He cannot go more and three posts on any subject without
attacking me. But that IS what a TROLL does.
But I am enjoying the honest discussion about Alekhine very much.
Rob