The AVRO tournament was a famous

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

tournament held in the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

1938 Events January * January 1 ** The Constitution of Estonia#Third Constitution (de facto 1938–1940, de jure 1938–1992), new constitution of Estonia enters into force, which many consider to be the ending of the Era of Silence and the a ...

, sponsored by the Dutch broadcasting company

AVRO AVRO, short for Algemene Vereniging Radio Omroep ("General Association of Radio Broadcasting"), was a Dutch public broadcasting association operating within the framework of the Nederlandse Publieke Omroep system. It was the first public broad ...

. The event was a double

round-robin tournament A round-robin tournament (or all-go-away-tournament) is a competition Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared: where one's gain is the other's loss (an example of which is a zero ...

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, ''Aleksándr Aleksándrovich Alékhin''; (March 24, 1946) was a Russian and French chess player and the fourth World Chess Champion, a title he held for two reigns. By the age of 22, Alekhine was already a ...

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

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

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 ( Fédération Internationale des Échecs), is an international organization based in Switzerland that connects the various national c ...

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 ( rus, Васи́лий Васи́льевич Смысло́в, Vasíliy Vasíl'yevich Smyslóv; 24 March 1921 – 27 March 2010) was a Soviet and Russian chess grandmaster, who was World Chess Champion from 1957 to ...

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 may refer to: Common uses * Draw (terrain), a terrain feature formed by two parallel ridges or spurs with low ground in between them * Drawing (manufacturing), a process where metal, glass, or plastic or anything ...

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) is a scoring system often used to break ties in chess tournaments. It is computed by summing the conventional score of each defeated opponent, and half the conventional score of each drawn opp ...

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 A stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop functionin ...

". 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 obstru ...

'' going into the tournament and it was the only tournament during his life wherein 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 .

External links

AVRO 1938AVRO 1938 game collection
on

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