Bled 1931 chess tournament was a major

chess tournament A chess tournament is a series of chess games played competitively to determine a winning individual or team. Since the first international chess tournament in London, 1851, chess tournaments have become the standard form of chess competition amo ...

proposed by

Milan Vidmar Milan Vidmar (22 June 1885 – 9 October 1962) was a Slovenian electrical engineer, chess player, chess theorist, and writer. He was among the top dozen chess players in the world from 1910 to 1930 and in 1950, was among the inaugural recipien ...

and held in 1931 in

Bled Bled (; german: Veldes,''Leksikon občin kraljestev in dežel zastopanih v državnem zboru,'' vol. 6: ''Kranjsko''. 1906. Vienna: C. Kr. Dvorna in Državna Tiskarna, p. 146. in older sources also ''Feldes'') is a town on Lake Bled in the Upper C ...

and

Ljubljana Ljubljana (also known by other historical names) is the capital and largest city of Slovenia. It is the country's cultural, educational, economic, political and administrative center. During antiquity, a Roman city called Emona stood in the ar ...

Slovenia Slovenia ( ; sl, Slovenija ), officially the Republic of Slovenia (Slovene: , abbr.: ''RS''), is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the southeast, an ...

, then part of the

Kingdom of Yugoslavia The Kingdom of Yugoslavia ( sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Kraljevina Jugoslavija, Краљевина Југославија; sl, Kraljevina Jugoslavija) was a state in Southeast Europe, Southeast and Central Europe that existed from 1918 unt ...

José Raúl Capablanca José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera (19 November 1888 – 8 March 1942) was a Cuban chess player who was world chess champion from 1921 to 1927. A chess prodigy, he is widely renowned for his exceptional endgame skill and speed of play. Capablanc ...

was not invited due to his disputes with 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 ...

. Noted master and writer

Al Horowitz Israel Albert Horowitz (often known as I. A. Horowitz or Al Horowitz) (November 15, 1907 – January 18, 1973) was an American International Master of chess. He is most remembered today for the books he wrote about chess. In 1989 he was induct ...

noted that Alekhine used his position as world champion to keep Capablanca out of the event.

Akiba Rubinstein Akiba Kiwelowicz Rubinstein (1 December 1880 – 14 March 1961) was a Polish chess player. He is considered to have been one of the greatest players never to have become World Chess Champion. Rubinstein was granted the title Grandmaster (chess), ...

was invited, but was replaced by Stoltz because Rubinstein accepted the invitation too late. Fourteen leading chess masters accepted their invitations. Round one started in the large salon on August 23, 1931. Alekhine won the tournament decisively, not losing a single game and finishing 5½ points ahead of

Efim Bogoljubow Efim Bogoljubow ( or ), also known as Ewfim Dimitrijewitsch Bogoljubow, ( (); also Romanized ''Bogoljubov'', ''Bogolyubov''; uk, Юхим Дмитрович Боголюбов, Yukhym Dmytrovych Boholiubov; April 14, 1889 – June 18, 1952) ...

. His

gambit A gambit (from Italian , the act of tripping someone with the leg to make them fall) is a chess opening in which a player sacrifices with the aim of achieving a subsequent advantage. The word ''gambit'' is also sometimes used to describe simi ...

style was humiliating for the other players.

Crosstable

References

Chess competitions Chess in Slovenia 1931 in chess Chess Tournament 1931 1931 in Slovenia {{chess-tournament-stub