22. Qd3 Qe6 23. Rg1 Qxb3 24. Rd8 Qb6 25. Re8 Ke8 26. Rg7 Kf8 27. Rh7

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22. Qd3 Qe6 23. Rg1 Qf6 24. Rg3 Be6 25. Qb5

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<But after the war it seemed that eventually Botvinnik was ready to play him [Alekhine] (it had been arranged) despite the controversy. But he fell drunk and raving from a hotel window to his death and so they played the 1948 World Championships.>

Alekhine was found dead sat in a chair in his hotel room in Estoril. A well-known photo of it exists. Possible heart failure, possible choking. As always, Edward Winter has covered it extensively:

24. .. g6! is draw (SF-dev + Syzygy 6; D=60 at root + self-play D>50 per move)

I don't know where you get that nonsense from. Alekhine died by choking on a piece of meat.

Although he had written in a letter that he suspected he was being followed, no document has ever emerged from the KGB / NKVD archives to support suspicions that he was murdered by the communists.

That is also incorrect.

Alekhine claimed that he was forced by the Nazis to write the articles, but also that they changed their content to make him seem anti-Semitic.

This is unbelievable.

Why would the Nazis force him to write articles that WERE NOT anti-Semitic?

Many people have been prepared to give Alekhine the benefit of the doubt, citing the supposed lack of proof, but - unfortunately for Alekhine - he gave an interview to a Spanish newspaper in which he expressed his pride in being the first person to write an article about chess 'from the racial point of view'.

The curious thing is that, before the Nazi conquest of Europe, Alekhine had written an article in which he praised Reti, Breyer, and Nimzowitsch, all of whom were Jewish, for their creativity, and criticised Capablanca for waiting for his opponents to make mistakes.

During one interview, Alekhine referred to Emanuel Lasker as 'the Jew Lasker'.

Max Euwe related that immediately following his only win against Lasker, Alekhine referred to him as 'the Jew'.

Fischer himself referred to Kasparov as 'the Jew Weinstein'.

Alekhine's antisemitism was well-known and Euwe was one of the grandmasters who objected to his participation in the London tournament of 1946.

I choked on some things last year and was saved by my son and a young Tongan man. It is quite scary.

The thing I wrote re Alekhine arose when I asserted a long time ago that he was Jewish and when someone pointed out he wasn't I realized my memory of reading about Alekhine etc via Edward Lasker's book of Chess and chess players led me to think he was Jewish like Rubinstein, and so on.

But then I made up a story of him being in Nazi German, a rival he had and so on....the fact though is that if I write he threw himself out of a window that that is the truth of the matter.

It is far more worthy of an anecdote a la, say Perec or Borges, say, or indeed Nabokov of 'The Defense'.....to be left out of history.

Max Euwe related that immediately following his only win against Lasker, Alekhine referred to him as 'the Jew'.>

Was Euwe Jewish?

<Fischer himself referred to Kasparov as 'the Jew Weinstein'.>

I know this, Fischer of course was Jewish himself. He was close to insane most of his life. I have Kasparov's book of his own life.

<Alekhine's antisemitism was well-known and Euwe was one of the grandmasters who objected to his participation in the London tournament of 1946.

The invitation to Alekhine was cancelled.>

But such anti-Semitism was very common in those days. Alekhine was White Russian and they were pretty right wing. Alekhine was a great player.

But then I lost interest.

N.O.F. NAJDORF might be interested, but I once had a long 'discussion' on here with an Israeli. This was some years ago.

Later, I had forgotten, but it is almost certain, looking through family histories etc that on my father's side (he was from London) it appears I am -- according to my Uncle (my father's brother) and my sister -- almost certainly of Jewish descent on that side. But I cant find anything further about my father's father etc as he had a feud with his father. But my grandfather's name was Samuel Aaron and that was changed later by I think my grandfather or perhaps him, to Taylor. By the names he and his wife might have emigrated from central or Eastern Europe, although another theory is Spain or Portugal....not sure....

Not that I have myself any religion per se. And I have no 'influence'.

It did occur to me somewhat in those days that it was strange that the Soviets embraced such a totally individualistic and egotistical game as chess as somehow liberating the working people and so on.

But that book had quite some influence to chess players. Not that it converted them to the Soviet system but it was a kind of quirky masterpiece.

Game 27 ended with an attack in the black king with the same material:

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Was Euwe Jewish?>

I apologise for the delay in replying, but I honestly didn't see your reply until now.

No he was not; he was ethnically Dutch.

<But such anti-Semitism was very common in those days. Alekhine was White Russian and they were pretty right wing.>

You are of course right about Russian nationalism and anti-Semitism, but, to my knowledge, anti-Semitism in the chess world has always been close to non-existent or very well-hidden.

There are to my knowledge only three chess masters who have openly displayed anti-Semitism: Alekhine, Spassky, and Fischer.

That does not mean that there were no others, but if there were, they kept quiet about it.

I am reminded of the composer Prokofiev's comment that were it not for the Jewish contribution, music would not exist.

That may partly explain the anti-Semitism of the German composer Wagner, who was insanely jealous of Mendelssohn, to whom he owed his entire style of music.

It is certainly true that without the Jewish contribution, the modern game of chess would not exist.

Like Wagner, who wrote a scandalous article accusing Jewish composers of lacking creativity, Alekhine accused the very originators of the modern game, whom he had praised for their originality prior to the Second World War, of lacking creativity.

Of course, it is not difficult to see what was bugging Alekhine: half the participants in the AVRO tournament of 1938, for example, were Jewish.

And it's not hard to see what was bugging Spassky, who signed an anti-Semitic Russian nationalist petition and also complained about people in important positions in post-Soviet Russia having 'big noses'.

And if you have the time, it would be worth comparing David Bronstein's nose with Boris Spassky's nose: there really is no contest.

When Spassky led the Soviet Union in its match with the Rest of the World in 1970, he was arguably the only real ethnic Russian in the entire team of 11 players, eight of whom were ether Jewish or part Jewish.

< Fischer of course was Jewish himself. He was close to insane most of his life.>

I agree. Although he had no religion, both his parents were Jewish and, as Jan Timman said when he died, he must have known that his father was Jewish and been motivated by 'some kind of Jewish self-hatred'.

In my opinion, his anti-Semitism was rooted in his own intellectual inadequacy, because as his friends themselves related, he was practically incapable of holding an intelligent conversation about anything other than chess.