Alexander Alekhine: From a Cheka Death Cell to Dethroning Capablanca

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Alexander Alekhine was born in Moscow in 1892 to a landowning legislative counselor and the daughter of a rich industrialist. He played correspondence chess by age 10 and placed third at St. Petersburg in 1914 behind Emanuel Lasker and José Raúl Capablanca. World War I broke out while he led a tournament in Mannheim; he was interned as an enemy alien, escaped home and served in the Red Cross. In 1919 the Cheka in Odessa put him in a death cell as a suspected White sympathizer, and he was saved after chess master Yakov Vilner telegraphed Soviet officials. In 1921 he married a Swiss journalist, the first of four wives, and left for France.

Capablanca's London Rules required a $10,000 purse, so Alekhine raised money with exhibitions, including blindfold displays against 26 and then 28 opponents. Backed by Argentine businessmen, he trained sober and beat Capablanca in Buenos Aires in 1927 in the longest title match for over 50 years. Denounced by the Soviet state, he drank heavily, lost the title to Max Euwe in 1935, quit drinking for five years and won it back in 1937. Wartime antisemitic articles under his name, which he denied writing, left him shunned. He died in Estoril in 1946 while negotiating a match with Mikhail Botvinnik.

• The legend that Tsar Nicholas II named him one of five grandmasters in 1914 lacks documentary evidence.
• His brother Alexei was forced to publicly denounce him after Alekhine criticized Bolshevism at a Paris banquet.
• He won San Remo and Bled by wide margins and led French Olympiad teams to medals.
• His famous Five Queens game of 1915 was a variation he invented afterward and presented as played.
• The autopsy cited choking on unchewed meat, while his son claimed the hand of Moscow had reached him.