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Feb-14-08
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| tamar: Euwe was an everyman's champion, because he was an amateur. Think of Roger Bannister's 4 minute mile, Euwe was that kind of champion-one who just set himself a goal, accomplished it, and then went on with his life. |
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| Feb-14-08 |
| nescio: <Open Defence: [...]others may not share my opinion but I feel we never really saw the full strength of Euwe the chess player> Strangely enough I think we did. He was the strongest in the world for a brief period, and had he accepted all invitations for tournaments after he won the title he might have defeated Alyekhin more convincing in 1937. But then again he might not. He was a chess professional from 1946-1949 and you'll remember that he then played the worst chess of his career. Only after he went back to mathematics did he recover and he played an excellent candidates tournament in 1953. <I guess he had other interests> He probably needed them. It was the interaction between interests (mathematics, chess, and his family) that gave him his motivation. |
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Feb-14-08
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| Open Defence: <nescio> the way I see it is that he was capable of being at the top for a good period but didn't that didn't seem to matter to him.. maybe I'm wrong |
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| Feb-14-08 |
| nescio: <Open Defence> I don't know. He was close to the top for a very long time. There is a story from the aftermath of the Groningen tournament in 1946 when he had a conversation with Fritz Sämisch about his ambition to win the title because he was hungry for chess after 5 years of German occupation. The eccentric German seems to have replied: "If you want to become world champion again, you'll have to drown your wife and children". Euwe didn't do that, but he did choose the life of a chess professional, which resulted in the debacle of 1948. |
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| Feb-14-08 |
| Jim Bartle: Looking at the photo above: Is Stephen Colbert a grandson of Max Euwe? |
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Feb-14-08
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| Open Defence: <nescio> I felt that by 1948 he was probably past his best chess strength and more importantly Botvinnik and the other Soviet players had taken the game to a new level. I don't think Euwe could match that level... it was a bit like Steinitz playing Lasker though not as drastic a mismatch maybe I'm simplifying it too much ? |
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| Feb-14-08 |
| nescio: <Open Defence> Don't worry, he could match that level. But he was 10 years older than Botvinnik and 20-30 years older than most of them. Still, that also wasn't the reason for his 1948 collapse, which already began in the first rounds. Five years later, in Zürich, he met the best of the Soviets: round 1 Euwe vs Kotov, 1953 1-0 round 2 Geller vs Euwe, 1953 0-1 (16...b5!; 22...Rh8!) round 3 Euwe vs Smyslov, 1953 0-1 (26.Nd7!) round 4 Keres vs Euwe, 1953 1/2 round 6 Bronstein vs Euwe, 1953 1/2 (22...Rd8!) round 8 Taimanov vs Euwe, 1953 0-1 (27...Rg4!) round 10 Petrosian vs Euwe, 1953 1-0 (7.Qe1!) round 11 Euwe vs Averbakh, 1953 0-1 (36...Nxa3!) round 15 Boleslavsky vs Euwe, 1953 1/2 (6...e5!) Such adventurous chess could only be played by someone fully equal to his opponents. His advanced age showed clearly in the second half of the tournament, but that's beside the point. As an aside the following masterpiece, as illustration of Euwe's good form in the first half of his last international tournament: round 9 Euwe vs Najdorf, 1953 |
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Feb-15-08
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| Red October: <nescio> is it possible he worked on his game and re-invented himself in the 50s ? |
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| Feb-15-08 |
| nescio: <Red October: <nescio> is it possible he worked on his game and re-invented himself in the 50s ?> Sure, he must have done, but as I tried to explain to <Open Defence> the problem in 1948 wasn't his chess ability, but a kind of depression, caused by too much chess. In 1949 he went back to teaching mathematics and he probably promised himself to prove once, and only once, more that he was one of the best in the world. In Amsterdam 1950 you still see a very timid Euwe, drawing 13 of the 19 games, but thereafter he regained his confidence and the quality of his play improved. The games in the first nine rounds of Zürich 1953 were magnificent. A few months later, in 1954, he lost the Dutch championship (after 33 years!) to Donner and for Euwe that meant a farewell to international chess, I presume, for he never competed in an important tournament again. |
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Feb-15-08
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| Red October: <but as I tried to explain to <Open Defence>> lol this is <Open Defence> .. this is a duplicate account I have for the GMT game... Ok I get the picture now.. so this seems a bit paradoxical because the image I had of Euwe was that his chess had to be prepared and planned rather than OTB inspiration.. but from what you say his chess was better when he mixed his life with other things I am not challenging what you say but trying to look at it against the other things we see from his games |
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| Feb-15-08 |
| nescio: <Open Defence> <Red October> :) I'll teach myself to read kibitzer's profiles. <so this seems a bit paradoxical because the image I had of Euwe was that his chess had to be prepared and planned rather than OTB inspiration.. but from what you say his chess was better when he mixed his life with other things> Good summary. Looking at his games I see little evidence of planning. He did a lot of preparation for his first match versus Alyekhin, studying his middle-games, but apart from analysing certain positions from the opening, how can you prepare a chess game? Every player formulates a plan to himself in the early middle-game, of course, but even the greatest "planner" of them all, Botvinnik, had to concede that the weak moves of his opponents tended to obstruct his carefully laid-out plans. |
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Feb-15-08
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| Red October: thanks <nescio> the depth of your insight into these players is impressive :) btw .. I don't know if you see a sort of similarity between Euwe, Huebner and Anand ? |
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| Feb-15-08 |
| nescio: <Red October: thanks> It is my pleasure. Some games are like old friends: it's always nice to see them again. <Euwe, Huebner and Anand ?> I don't know about Anand, for I have only seen some of his games when he was a teenager, and some of the most recent years, but only superficially. Hübner and Euwe had indeed a similar style in playing, purposeful and combinatorial when needed, but a completely different style of analysis. Euwe's notes you can read and understand without the use of a chess set, but Hübner...I once discovered his analysis of Huebner vs Portisch, 1981 and it took me a week of evenings just to work through his notes. Every move was accompanied by literally dozens of variations and subvariations. Unbelievable. Incidentally he started at the 15th move and showed convincingly that every move thereafter was a mistake and unworthy of a grandmaster :) |
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| Feb-15-08 |
| MichAdams: <I don't know if you see a sort of similarity between Euwe, Huebner and Anand ?> All four-eyed gits? |
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| Mar-12-08 |
| Ruy Lopez: <Open Defence: <knight13> check out this game Euwe vs Alekhine, 1935 others may not share my opinion but I feel we never really saw the full strength of Euwe the chess player I guess he had other interests>
Yes, i see what you mean he was a math teacher. And we also, must remember in that game that ALekhine was drunk. |
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| May-20-08 |
| Billy Vaughan: First to say...
Happy birthday Max Euwe! A great chess player and gentleman :) |
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May-20-08
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| ahmadov: <Billy Vaughan: First to say...> I wanted to say that first, but I later thought one cannot say that to dead people... |
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| Jun-05-08 |
| Xeroxx: Well at least you can say birthday. Cause he was once born. So birthday in arrears, Euwe! |
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| Jul-16-08 |
| myschkin: http://www.maxeuwe.nl/ |
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| Aug-10-08 |
| myschkin: . . .
"Silence and coffee"
http://chesshistory.com/winter/pics... http://www.evrado.com/chess/katalog... |
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| Aug-31-08 |
| myschkin: . . .
In 1981 Max Euwe was interviewed by GM Hans Bouwmeester for Europe Echecs. The interview was also published in Chess, September-October 1981. http://blog.chess.com/view/inside-m... [has anyone a source for it?] |
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| Sep-13-08 |
| Fanacas: He was the only and last amteure world champion. His greatest weakenes was that he couldnt get himself good out of bad positions. |
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| Sep-21-08 |
| GrahamClayton: Euwe had accepted an invitation from the ICCF to play in the final of the 11th World Correspondence Championship. As preparation, he entered the 10th Dutch CC championship, but died before it was completed. His unfinished games were adjudicated, and he finished in 4th place with a score of 9.5/14. Source: Tim Harding "50 Golden Chess Games - More Masterpieces of Correspondence Chess", Chess Mail, 2004 |
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| Oct-23-08 |
| Sem: I was surprised to read that in Wallonic, the ancient French-like dialect of Southern Belgium, 'Euwe' means 'water'. |
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| Nov-24-08 |
| GrahamClayton: Here is a quote from GM Raymond Keene about Euwe during the 2008 Howard Staunton Memorial: "The theme of sacrificing on an empty square is very much associated with the Dutch World Champion Max Euwe". Is this true? How many of Euwe's games feature this theme? |
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