MegaBase 2024 is Chess History in action. Regularly updated every month, the Main Database currently offers 10.6 million games, many of them annotated. In the first part of his review he dealt with the treatment of chess in the 21st Century <a href="https://en.chessbase.com/post/megabase-2024-review-nagesh-havanur">in the MegaBase</a>. Here he offers a rare discovery from a world championship match that fell into oblivion.
On 15 January 1930 one of the strongest chess tournaments of the time began in the Italian resort of San Remo. 16 players took part, including the reigning world champion Alexander Alekhine and chess legends such as Aron Nimzowitsch, Akiba Rubinstein and Efim Bogoljubow. Alekhine won comfortably with 14 points from 15 games, achieving one of the greatest successes of his career. His third wife, Nadasha Vasilyev, probably played a major role in this and other Alekhine successes. | Photo: Alekhine and Nadascha in San Remo 1930 | Photo: https://audiovis.nac.gov.pl/
Wally and Käthe Henschel were twins, born in Hamburg on 09.09.1893. In the 1920s and 1930s they were among the best players in Hamburg, and in 1930 Wally even beat Vera Menchik at the Women's World Championship Tournament in Hamburg - the only game Menchik ever lost in a Women's World Championship Tournament. But after the Kristallnacht pogrom on 9 November 1938, the twins, who came from a Jewish family, decided to flee to the USA, where they went on to play in the U.S. Women's Championships and where Wally may even have played against Bobby Fischer. | Photo: The Henschel family
What, you may well ask, is the 'Two Plus Club'? Is this some country club for lonelyhearts, or something of that ilk? Nothing like that. By winning the Candidates tournament for the second straight time, and thus qualifying himself for a second shot at the World title, Ian Nepomniachtchi has joined a very exclusive group of repeat challengers. Let's take a look at who they are. | Photo: FIDE / Stev Bonhage
3.5
As the table shows, Alekhine did not suffer a single loss, whereas Schmidt lost two games: one against Georg Kieninger and one against Alekhine. The two later tournament winners, Schmidt and Alekhine, met each other in the fourth round and in this game Schmidt had what he later described as his most unforgettable chess experience . According to Schmidt, Alekhine in this game moved a rook and just took the move back . (See Eva Regina Magacs, Michael Negele,
Paul Felix Schmidt: A Winning Formula, Exzelsior Verlag, Edition Randstein 2017, p. 106).
What happened?
Alekhine shared his version of the events in this game with Francesco Lupi, who then retold Alekhine s tales to the chess public in the British magazine CHESS. Alekhine probably overlooked the simple mate after 31.Rb8+ because he had drunk too much cognac during the game. In his account of the incident Alekhine more or less openly admits that he was drunk during the game, but he provides a different explanation fo