On Nov 10, 9:40 am, "The Historian" wrote:
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?

No, Tarrasch peaked around 1900-1910 and had faded badly by 1927, but
at the time he actually had an even lifetime score vs. Capablanca: +1
-1 =2. It was not until their last tournament encounter, at Berlin
1928, that Capa beat him again. On the other hand, Tarrasch's last win
vs. Capa was in 1914, so I would agree that Alekhine was stretching to
make a point.
In fact with the exception of Réti, none of the players Alekhine
named had beaten Capablanca since then: Lasker last did it in 1914,
Rubinstein in 1911, and Bogo never did, though both he and Lasker had
finished ahead of Capa in tournaments (L at NY 1924, B at Moscow 1925).
Bogo was 0-5 vs. Capa until 1929, when he finally managed a draw at
Carlsbad.
I do not really know if there was any conscious policy on the 1927
organizers' part to stack the deck in Capa's favor. I know that
Bogolyubov was invited, but declined rather rudely, saying that instead
of a "mediocre" tournament they should arrange a title match between
him and Capa. Whether any of Alekhine's other suggested participants
were invited, I do not know.

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.

I shall see if I can acquire Levy's book.

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.