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

On Nov 20, 12:51 pm, Taylor Kingston wrote:

Did Keres' family situation allow this?

I don't know about during most of WW II, but toward the end, when
the USSR was re-taking Estonia from the Germans, Keres had a chance to
get away. However, it would have been escape for him alone. He was not
willing to abandon his wife and children.


A wife and children -- right there is the elusive
smoking gun. No wonder he wasn't able to take
the title. Did Bobby Fischer have a wife and
chldren? No. Did Gary Kasparov? Nope (his
mother doesn't count). What about Alexander
Alekhine? Nyet. This is (obviously) a handicap,
much like adopting the French Defense as
black and the Reti or Bird's as white.


-- help bot

BOTSTER'S HANDICAP


A wife and children -- right there is the elusive
smoking gun. No wonder he wasn't able to take
the title. Did Bobby Fischer have a wife and
chldren? No. Did Gary Kasparov? Nope (his
mother doesn't count). What about Alexander
Alekhine? Nyet. This is (obviously) a handicap,
much like adopting the French Defense as
black and the Reti or Bird's as white. -- Greg Kennedy

Gregbot strikes again!

"A few years after his death the Soviet authorities honoured him as
the greatest star of Russian chess and requested his reburial in
Russia. His widow objected, and in 1956 his body was reinterred in
Montparnasse cemetary. The ceremony was attended by ALEKHINE'S SON [my
emphasis] by Anneliese Ruegg, who came from Switzerland, and by the
Soviet Ambassador." -- THE OXFORD COMPANION TO CHESS

On Nov 21, 7:05 pm, " wrote:

...the price of [Paul Keres'] reprieve was to abandon his quest
for the crown." -- GM Larry Evans (1996)

This nonsense was utterly refuted by Taylor Kingston
in his Chess Cafe articles. It is of course unsurprising
that Larry Parr continues to quote LE's error, ad infinitum.
It's almost as though LP's job were to embarrass the five-
time U.S. Champion, though one expects his true intent
is just the opposite.

Far from "abandoning" any quest for the crown, GM
Keres merely stepped aside temporarily, to allow his
rival, GM Botvinnik, first dibs. In sum, no amount of
quoting from the Oxford Companion *to* Chess can
make up for the embarrassing error already refuted by
TK at the Chess Cafe. Larry Evans got his facts in
a jumble, leaped to unwarranted conclusions, and as
always, printed his biased speculations and
conjectures as though they were proven facts.

In my view, it is unfortunate that not only do we
have evidence of personal bias, but indeed there is
substantial evidence of deliberate deception, and this
goes far beyond merely being incompetent and or
witted. Time and again, both Mr. Evans and Mr. Parr
have been caught lying, twisting the facts, and of
course, misrepresenting what little they do know of
the facts to suit an agenda. As GM Seirawan has
observed, this dishonesty appears to be /endemic/.

No anti-biotic or jock-itch cream will have the
slightest effect; the dread disease has progressed to
a point where the patients may fairly be considered
/incurable/.

----

Now, having for a brief time abandoned my quest,
I am returning to an interesting battle with Sanny's
confounded machine; I have but a King remaining,
against King and Knight, and this is going to require
all my powers if I expect to defeat the Commie plot
to win by default, should I be unable to continue for
having consumed too much turkey... .


-- help bot

On Nov 21, 7:05 pm, " wrote:

The KGB wanted to execute Keres for treason, and his family was
was also in peril. -- Larry Evans

Has this ever really been established?
In the first place, strictly speaking, the KGB (Committee for State
Security) did not exist until 1954, therefore it seems unlikely it
could have wanted to do anything in 1945 or 1946. At that time the
relevant police organ would have been the People's Commissariat for
Internal Affairs, the NKVD. Perhaps a distinction without a
difference, but it's important to keep facts straight.
All manner of rumors have floated around about Keres in the
immediate post-war years: he was arrested, he was not arrested, he was
going to be executed, he was too valuable to be executed, Botvinnik
wanted him killed, Botvinnik wanted to save him, etc. etc. Few if any
of these seem to have any basis.
Valter Heuer, a close friend of Keres, wrote extensively of Kere's
post-war travails in "The Troubled Years of Paul Keres" (New In Chess,
#4, 1995). He describes many harships, including Keres being
interrogated by police, yet he mentions no arrest at all ever taking
place. In fact, a high-ranking official in the Estonian Communist
Party, Nikolai Karotamm, was very pro-Keres.

This is not to suggest Keres was well-treated in the immediate post-
war years -- he definitely was not. As Bernard Cafferty wrote in the
BCM of February 2000:

"A document of 29th August 1946 states that ... serious compromising
material had been discovered on Keres, by reason of his collaboration
with the Germans ... and his links with active participants of the
Estonian 'bourgeois-nationalist underground'."

Such suspicions could certainly be grounds for arrest and even
execution in Stalin's USSR. But, I wonder, did any arrest actually
take place? And did anyone really want "to execute Keres [or his
family] for treason," and if so, who, and what is the evidence that
they did?

On Nov 21, 9:36 pm, " wrote:


The ceremony was attended by ALEKHINE'S SON [my
emphasis] by Anneliese Ruegg, who came from Switzerland, and by the
Soviet Ambassador." -- THE OXFORD COMPANION TO CHESS

If I didn't know better, I might conclude that Larry
Parr is accusing AA of sleeping around. (Of course,
he would never mean to imply that AA was held
back in his quest for the title by this widow or son --
that would be dimwitted, since it was the widow's
money which *aided* AA.)


-- help bot

On Nov 22, 11:18 am, Taylor Kingston wrote:
On Nov 21, 7:05 pm, " wrote:

The KGB wanted to execute Keres for treason, and his family was
was also in peril. -- Larry Evans

Has this ever really been established?

"The memory plays tricks." -- Larry Evans

I seem to recall reading in one of the TK articles
that LE's remark probably stemmed from the story
about a Robert Keres, for whom the Russians had
an arrest warrant.


In the first place, strictly speaking, the KGB (Committee for State
Security) did not exist until 1954, therefore it seems unlikely it
could have wanted to do anything in 1945 or 1946.

It's starting again; you are allowing mere facts to stand
in the way of a good story.


At that time the
relevant police organ would have been the People's Commissariat for
Internal Affairs, the NKVD. Perhaps a distinction without a
difference, but it's important to keep facts straight.

Um, no. What is important to the writer is to weave
an interesting plot, with elements of surprise and
characters who strike a chord with the readers. Only
in, say, a detective story (think Sherlock Holmes) is
the keeping of facts in their proper order important,
for the readers will feel cheated otherwise.


All manner of rumors have floated around about Keres in the
immediate post-war years: he was arrested, he was not arrested, he was
going to be executed, he was too valuable to be executed, Botvinnik
wanted him killed, Botvinnik wanted to save him, etc. etc. Few if any
of these seem to have any basis.

But do they /make for a good story/?


Valter Heuer, a close friend of Keres, wrote extensively of Kere's
post-war travails in "The Troubled Years of Paul Keres" (New In Chess,
#4, 1995). He describes many harships, including Keres being
interrogated by police, yet he mentions no arrest at all ever taking
place. In fact, a high-ranking official in the Estonian Communist
Party, Nikolai Karotamm, was very pro-Keres.

Plot spoiler! Once you demolish the illusion of
a conspiracy by citing contrary facts, the whole
thing falls down, like a house of cards.


This is not to suggest Keres was well-treated in the immediate post-
war years -- he definitely was not. As Bernard Cafferty wrote in the
BCM of February 2000:

"A document of 29th August 1946 states that ... serious compromising
material had been discovered on Keres, by reason of his collaboration
with the Germans ... and his links with active participants of the
Estonian 'bourgeois-nationalist underground'."

Such suspicions could certainly be grounds for arrest and even
execution in Stalin's USSR. But, I wonder, did any arrest actually
take place? And did anyone really want "to execute Keres [or his
family] for treason," and if so, who, and what is the evidence that
they did?

The script has already answered such questions.
It was decided that the KGB would play the bad guys,
but that the main heavy would be played by an actor
resembling GM Botvinnik.


When GM Averbakh stated *precisely the opposite*
of his lines in the Evans script, the Evans ratpack --
having invested everything they had in this venture --
just went ahead anyway. And when /real detectives/
like Mr. Heuer refused to robo-recite lines scripted
for them, the poor fellows had no other choice than
to /write them out/ of their version -- the director's cut.

The Evans ratpack version veers far afield from the
"true story" on which this tale was originally to be
based; but you have to admit, it makes for a good
story. Something akin to A Beautiful Mind, I expect,
except that it was the producer-directors who went
insane.


-- help bot

On Nov 23, 4:26 am, help bot wrote:

At that time the
relevant police organ would have been the People's Commissariat for
Internal Affairs, the NKVD. Perhaps a distinction without a
difference, but it's important to keep facts straight.

Um, no. What is important to the writer is to weave
an interesting plot, with elements of surprise and
characters who strike a chord with the readers. Only
in, say, a detective story (think Sherlock Holmes) is
the keeping of facts in their proper order important,
for the readers will feel cheated otherwise.

I do hope you don't mean chronology when you write "a proper order",
because it's common to present facts to the reader that the reader
won't understand yet or misinterpret. Think of the dog that didn't
bark in Conan Doyle's short story Silver Blaze, for instance. Or the
Christie novel with Hercule Poirot - I don't recall the name of it -
in which the detective asks someone - the butler, if I recall
correctly - to verify the date on the calendar; the reader assumes the
date is important, when the "fact" that's important is that the butler
is nearsighted.

If you mean by "proper order" not bringing in a deus ex machina 'fact'
that upsets the dogcart, I agree with you.

On Nov 23, 8:18 am, The Historian wrote:
On Nov 23, 4:26 am, help bot wrote:

At that time the
relevant police organ would have been the People's Commissariat for
Internal Affairs, the NKVD. Perhaps a distinction without a
difference, but it's important to keep facts straight.

Um, no. What is important to the writer is to weave
an interesting plot, with elements of surprise and
characters who strike a chord with the readers. Only
in, say, a detective story (think Sherlock Holmes) is
the keeping of facts in their proper order important,
for the readers will feel cheated otherwise.

I do hope you don't mean chronology when you write "a proper order",

Given the context of my comment, it is clear that TK's
term "straight" (and hence my follow-up comment) were
in reference to factual accuracy, not chronology.


because it's common to present facts to the reader that the reader
won't understand yet or misinterpret. Think of the dog that didn't
bark in Conan Doyle's short story Silver Blaze, for instance. Or the
Christie novel with Hercule Poirot - I don't recall the name of it -

Fritz? Rover?


in which the detective asks someone - the butler, if I recall
correctly - to verify the date on the calendar; the reader assumes the
date is important, when the "fact" that's important is that the butler
is nearsighted.

Do you mean far-sighted? Near-sighted butlers can read
up close, but have trouble if the calendar is held far away.


If you mean by "proper order" not bringing in a deus ex machina 'fact'
that upsets the dogcart, I agree with you.

I meant precisely the same as Mr. Kingston meant in
his commentary: that keeping facts straight is important.
For instance, mixing up dates has caused the Evans
ratpack considerable difficulties, as has getting their
"facts" in a mess. But their main problem is and has
always been the peculiar selectivity in choosing which
facts to take note of, and which to dishonestly sweep
under the rug.


-- help bot