Peregrinating Chess

Last October the New York Times headlined a story: ALEKHINE'S MOVE STIRS CHESS FANS. This was no arrant sensationalism. Dutchman Max Euwe, chess champion of the world, was defending his title against One-time Champion Alexandre Alekhine. The move in question occurred in Haarlem during the sixth game of a 30-game peregrinating match (played in The Hague, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Haarlem, Leyden, Delft). Dr. Alekhine opened with a queen's gambit and was met by a Slav defense. On his sixth move Dr. Alekhine suddenly offered to sacrifice a knight. Dr. Euwe nibbled his fingers and stared at the board, nonplussed. A sacrifice so early in the game, in that position, was unheard of. He brooded for 40 minutes, then decided not to accept the sacrifice. The move he made instead was a bad one. Dr. Alekhine won the sixth game, and Dr. Euwe's intellectual processes were disrupted. He lost three of the next four games before he recovered from the shock of that one intellectual ambuscade.

Last week, coming up to the 25th game, Challenger Alekhine had won nine games, Champion Euwe four, and eleven were drawn. If Dr. Alekhine were to win the 25th game he would clinch the match (15 1/2 points to 9 1/2) and the remaining five games would be merely exhibitions. Played in The Hague before a large gallery of chess experts, the game ended after 43 moves when Dr. Euwe resigned, relaxed, reached his hand across the board to congratulate his opponent. After two months of play. Dr. Alexandre Alekhine, Russian-born Parisian, had regained the world's chess championship he won in 1927 from Cuban Jose Capablanca, lost in 1935 to Dr. Euwe (TIME, Dec. 30, 1935).

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