(After Capablanca's 37. ... c8??)

"A terrible oversight which throws away a position which was by no means desperate and which has improved in the last twelve to fifteen moves. The explanation of his blunder has been given by Capablanca himself in the Soviet magazine "64" (20th August, 1936). He writes : 'Both players were very short of time. When four moves remained to be made our table was surrounded by a crowd of journalists, participants and others. It is impossible to play under such circumstances.'

'Max Euwe, who stood close to the table, spoke several times to Flohr, telling him the number of mvoes remaining to be made, as both players had stopped writing down the moves. As I requested him to keep quiet he started to argue with me, and tried to persuade me that he was entitled to speak.'

'This interference on the part of Euwe was absolutely inadmissable; but the tournament director was at that time busy with his own correspondence, and as a result of this interference I made a grave error, losing the exchange.'

The simplest was to return with the R to Q2."

In my opinion, Flohr is a smart person who is good at working combinations but he doesnt play chess like a true master. Most players will invariably attempt to exchange when they are ahead. Yes even by only a pawn.

Flohr goes about his business w/o really trying to do that. He obviously has the intellect to do that if only he knew the secret. We've seen him go many moves with ALekhine, there is no doubt the man was smart, but time and again everybody seems to beat Flohr.

ONe small example in this game; look at 19 Bf5; hes trying to win material. This will not work against a player who is playing well and is already down in material. FLohr need to force exchanges. This goes on the whole game, Flohr has the lead in material and will not attempt to exchange. Capablanca and Alekhine must have chuckled to themselves because Flohr will never beat anybody if doesnt know when to exchange.

Anyhow, now move up to move 59. Why does he bring the K back to f4? What if he brings it over to the Q side and swaps material there?

I quote Saidy:

"Salo Flohr (1908-1983) carried on the classical tradition. He had little to do with the avant-garde; rather, his best efforts were very reminiscent of Capablanca. Usually he did not extend himself against his foremost opponents in a tournament, being content to draw with them while defeating the lesser lights, often with fine endgame technique. The books are filled with spectacular brilliancies. Instead, it should be instructive to see an example of Flohr's dry, quiet play, much closer to the bread-and-butter chess that wins modern tournaments."

Saidy then reproduces the following games:

Flohr vs Euwe, 1932
Flohr vs Lasker, 1936

"When four moves remained" -Capablanca in '64'

Time control: 36 moves in two hours - Resignation Trap

What apparently happened, then, is that Euwe tried to inform the players that they had reached the somewhat unusual time control. Capablanca was unable to process the info and blitzed the blunder. Even in '64', after the fact, he thought the time control was at 40 moves.

<Analysis diagram after 37.e4!!>

click for larger view

that Flohr missed, perhaps because of his (perceived?) time pressure. (The move may be more subtle than I suppose, because Alekhine did not point 37.e4 out in the tournament book.) Black's best chance is 37...h5! 38.exd5 Rd6 39.Bc2 h4 40.Qe3 g6 41.Nc6 Qf6 42.Ne5, but White has an extra pawn and a probable win:

<Analysis: White is winning>

click for larger view

To a large degree, the mutual inaccuracies were due to mutual time pressure. It was so severe that Capablanca's decisive blunder came at move 37, even though move 36 completed the first time control.

That depends on what you think world class is I guess. Here's a snippet from a post today from a man that I think you may have heard of.

And he may have been the best FIDE ever had. For sure he's 10 times better than those clowns Campomanes or Ilyumzhinov. Without him and Lothar Schmid as the arbiter Fischer-Spassky may never have gotten off the ground.