In September 1922, the planners of the Hastings chess congress chose to organize a masters tournament. This event aimed to match two skilled English chess masters against four of the most accomplished players from Europe. The format adopted was a double round-robin, featuring notable participants such as Alexander Alekhine, Efim Bogoljubov, Akiba Rubinstein, Siegbert Tarrasch, George Thomas, and Frederick Yates. The tournament concluded with Alekhine narrowly surpassing Rubinstein by half a point during the final round. Notably, Alekhine secured his victory through a well-known victory against Bogoljubov, while Rubinstein struggled intensely for over a hundred moves against Thomas without achieving success.
The game (played at the mentioned tournament) I selected for today’s article was remarkable in several points:
- No pawns were captured until the 24. move.
- Alekhine applied The Octopus Knight formation to get to the winning position.
- Black sacrificed a queen three times.
Let’s take a look: