AVRO 1938

I have no dispute with Mr. Hyde's scholarly presentation.

My main point was to illustrate that Greg Kennedy's historical
ignorance is boundless. Specifically, his bogus claim that the
following paragraph by GM Evans in THE TRAGEDY OF PAUL KERES (1996)
was a "grotesque distortion [that] has been refuted time and again."

"Botvinnik was then absolute champion of the Soviet Union (which had
swallowed Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) while Keres was in trouble
for having competed in Nazi-organized tournaments during the war. The
KGB wanted to execute Keres for treason, and his family was also in
peril. His case was examined at the highest level in the Kremlin; they
let him rejoin his family in Estonia, but the price of his reprieve
was to abandon his quest for the crown."

In a preface to AVRO 1938 (Chess Digest 1993) Dr. Arthur Antler
stated: "In 1938, a major controversy existed in the international
chess world. Alexander Alekhine had recently regained the position of
World Champion by convincingly defeating Max Euwe in a rematch for
the title. The question remained as to which grandmaster should have
the privilege of challenging Alekhine for the next title match.
Various players citing excellent results in recent tournaments made
claim to be the next challenger. But who was the second best player in
the world?

"In order to help settle this dispute a Dutch radio company,
Allgemeene Vereenigung Radio-Omroep (A.V.R.O.) organized a tournament
exclusively of the eight strongest players in the world at the time,
with the belief that the winner of the tournament, if not Alekhine
himself, would earn the right to the next World Championship match."

THE OXFORD COMPANION TO CHESS notes: "The joint winners were the
youngest, Keres and Fine; Botvinnik was third. Alekhine, Euwe, and
Reshevsky shared fourth place, Capablanca and Flohr followed. Keres,
having the higher Neustadtl score, challenged Alekhine for the world
title; but no match took place, for Alekhine was already negotiating
secretly with Botvinnik."

In 1940 Keres narrowly won a 14-game match against Euwe. The rest is
history.






William Hyde wrote:
On Nov 21, 8:16 am, " wrote:

Keres by virtue of his victory at AVRO 1938 (ahead of Fine on tie-
break) was next in line for a shot at the title held by Alekhine, but
the war intervened.

This is not true at all. Alekhine explicitly stated at the opening
ceremonies that he "retained the right to first play for the world
title with others", i.e. before he played the AVRO
winner. His contract with AVRO was to play the winner
"under conditions to be formulated later".

Given these two statements, the AVRO guarantee was meaningless. He
could play as many other people as he wanted to before playing the
winner, and if he still held the title, could spin the negotiations on
the "formulated later" as long as he liked.

He further wrote in January 1939:

"The logical and inescapable conclusion [to be drawn from AVRO - WH]
is that the next match for the world title must be fought against a
representative of the younger generation. Which one? In my opinion
this is a matter of minor importance; no one can claim an exclusive
moral right to be the first challenger."

Clearly Alekhine saw no special status for Keres. But he continues:

"... after the tournament was over Keres challenged me to a match,
adding that he would prefer not to play before the end of 1940.
Accepting in principle, I communicated to him my financial
conditions ...."

So Keres asked for a match to be held two years later (or more), and
Alekhine accepted in principle - much like the Flohr match that never
happened. But he also said:

"There remains the possibility of another title match in 1939",
i.e. against Fine, Botvinnik, or Reshevsky, if any of these made a
challenge backed up with cash.

Keres himself wrote an article in Chess Review, March 1941, titled
"The World Chess Championship". In this he assesses the strengths and
weaknesses of Alekhine's main challengers, including himself (and also
Flohr).

Nowhere in an article of several pages does he claim that AVRO gives
him any right to a match, and in fact the tournament is mentioned only
twice, once to show that Alekhine was no longer in a class by himself,
and again while discussing Fine's chances (Fine won both games against
Alekhine at AVRO).

Keres concludes:

"A good deal has been said about existing contenders, yet the
outstanding question still remains unsolved: how should priority for
the match be determined? To answer this, it would be necessary to
have recourse to one or several tournaments in which all the claimants
could participate. Such tourneys should also be open to new stars who
are in need of training with the world's strongest masters."

He then goes on to outline a zonal/candidates system, very simple
compared to the one FIDE used - but the idea is the same - and
continues:

"In conversations with Alekhine I gained the impression that he would
agree in principle to such a plan ...."

Note, no mention of his AVRO "right" to a match. Either it never
existed, or he felt the right had expired along with his 1940 match.
Now, when he wrote this article Estonia was under Soviet occupation,
so he may have been forced to drop this claim. But if so, it was in
1940/41 not 1947.

He had a chance to reassert any such claim in the next
few years, while playing tournaments with Alekhine, but
if he did so (and I have not heard that he did), no match resulted.

All of the above quotes are from "Chess Review" for 1938,39 and 41.

William Hyde