The AVRO tournament was a famous

chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

tournament held in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

in 1938, sponsored by the Dutch broadcasting company

AVRO Avro (an initialism of the founder's name) was a British aircraft manufacturer. Its designs include the Avro 504, used as a trainer in the First World War, the Avro Lancaster, one of the pre-eminent bombers of the Second World War, and the d ...

. The event was a double

round-robin tournament A round-robin tournament or all-play-all tournament is a competition format in which each contestant meets every other participant, usually in turn.''Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged'' (1971, G. & ...

between the eight strongest players in the world.

Paul Keres Paul Keres (; 7 January 1916 – 5 June 1975) was an Estonian chess grandmaster and chess writer. He was among the world's top players from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s, and narrowly missed a chance at a World Chess Championship match on five ...

and

Reuben Fine Reuben C. Fine (October 11, 1914 – March 26, 1993) was an American chess player, psychologist, university professor, and author of many books on both chess and psychology. He was one of the strongest chess players in the world from the mi ...

tied for first place, with Keres winning on tiebreak by virtue of his 1½-½ score in their individual games. The tournament was presented as one to provide a challenger to World Champion

Alexander Alekhine Alexander Aleksandrovich Alekhine. He disliked when Russians sometimes pronounced the of as , , which he regarded as a Yiddish distortion of his name, and insisted that the correct Russian pronunciation was . (March 24, 1946) was a Russian ...

, though it had no official status. In any event,

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

dashed any hopes of a championship match for years to come. However, when

FIDE The International Chess Federation or World Chess Federation, commonly referred to by its French acronym FIDE ( , ), is an international organization based in Switzerland that connects the various national chess federations and acts as the Spor ...

organised its 1948 match tournament for the world title after Alekhine's death in 1946, it invited the six surviving AVRO participants (Capablanca had also died), except Flohr who was replaced by

Vasily Smyslov Vasily Vasilyevich Smyslov (; 24 March 1921 – 27 March 2010) was a Soviet and Russian chess grandmaster who was the seventh World Chess Champion from 1957 to 1958. He was a Candidates Tournament, Candidate for the World Chess Championship on ...

Schedule

The AVRO tournament was played from November 6 to November 27, 1938. The players travelled from one city to another in the following order:

Crosstable

The longest game was a 68-move win of Fine over Alekhine. The shortest game was a 19-move

draw Draw, drawing, draws, or drawn most commonly refer to: * Draw (terrain), a terrain feature formed by two parallel ridges or spurs with low ground in between them * Draw (tie), in a competition, where competitors achieve equal outcomes * Draw ...

between Flohr and Fine. Of the 56 games played: White won seventeen, Black won seven, and thirty-two were drawn. The tiebreak method was the

Sonneborn–Berger score The Sonneborn–Berger score (or the Neustadtl score or rarely Neustadtl Sonneborn–Berger score) is a scoring system often used to break ties in chess tournaments. It is computed by summing the full conventional score of each defeated opponen ...

. The tournament was supposed to select a challenger to Alekhine's crown, but due to the advent of World War II, no match could be held. GM

Larry Kaufman Lawrence Charles Kaufman (born November 15, 1947) is an American chess player. He was awarded the title Grandmaster by FIDE for winning the 2008 World Seniors Championship (which he later retroactively shared with Mihai Suba). Kaufman had been ...

wrote in 2023 that Fine "was a clear favorite" had he played against Alekhine in 1939 or 1940, whereas for Keres "it's not so clear whether he would have defeated Alekhine in 1940" (as Keres' peak play was in the 1950s).

Capablanca's health

Capablanca's play was satisfactory in the first half of the event (50%), but collapsed in the second half, when he lost three games. He had only lost 26 tournament games in 29 years. Hooper and Whyld say "he suffered a slight

stroke Stroke is a medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to a part of the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemor ...

". His wife Olga recalled that his high blood pressure nearly cost him his life: "A doctor screamed at me, 'How could you let him play?'" (at AVRO 1938). In a 1939 interview Capablanca attributed his performance to "very high blood pressure and related circulatory disorders". His doctor wrote that he had dangerously high blood pressure while he was treating him from 1940 until his death in 1942, and believed that it contributed to his death. The Cuban had been suffering from ''

angina pectoris Angina, also known as angina pectoris, is chest pain or pressure, usually caused by insufficient blood flow to the heart muscle (myocardium). It is most commonly a symptom of coronary artery disease. Angina is typically the result of part ...

'' going into the tournament and it was the only tournament during his life in which he lost more games than he won.

References

Sources

*АВРО-турнир: Состязание сильнейших гроссмейстеров мира. Голландия, 1938 год / �вт.-сост. Г. Г. Торадзе Москва: Галерия, 2006. 295 с {{ISBN, 5-8137-0159-1.

External links