San Sebastian 1912

The second of the two great San Sebastián supertournaments gathered eleven of Europe's leading masters on the Basque coast for a marathon double round-robin. Akiba Rubinstein won it — half a point clear of Aron Nimzowitsch and Rudolf Spielmann — and did so at the height of his powers, opening the annus mirabilis of 1912 in which he would sweep one first prize after another.

◇A sequel to 1911

San Sebastián had announced itself in 1911 as one of the strongest tournaments in the world — the event where the young José Raúl Capablanca stunned the establishment by winning on his European début. The 1912 sequel returned to the same Spanish resort with the same generous backing, first prize alone worth 5,000 francs, but a changed cast: neither Capablanca nor World Champion Emanuel Lasker took part, leaving the field to the strongest of the European masters.

Eleven players contested a double round-robin: Rubinstein, Nimzowitsch, Spielmann, Siegbert Tarrasch, Julius Perlis, Frank Marshall, Oldřich Duras, Carl Schlechter, Richard Teichmann, Paul Leonhardt and Rudolf Forgács. It was a long, gruelling event, each master meeting every other twice across more than a month of play.

◇Decided in the final round

Rubinstein and Nimzowitsch were neck and neck to the finish, and it came down to their game in the last round. Nimzowitsch needed only a draw to catch the leader; instead he chose a sharp, dubious plan and let the game get wild. On move 25 both players missed a mate in two before Rubinstein pulled himself together and won, taking clear first.

The final margin was the narrowest possible: Rubinstein on 12½, Nimzowitsch and Spielmann tied for second on 12, and the veteran theoretician Tarrasch just behind on 11½. Perlis, Marshall, Duras and Schlechter completed the upper half of the table.

◇The start of an annus mirabilis

San Sebastián was only the opening act of Rubinstein's astonishing 1912. Over that single year he also carried off first prizes at Bad Pistyan, the German Chess Federation congress at Breslau, and the tournaments at Warsaw and Vilna — a run of victories that set a record for dominance in a single season and marked him, in many eyes, as the natural challenger for Lasker's crown, a match the two men never played.

The archive here preserves 100 of the tournament's games, the surviving record of a field that included four future or former contenders for the world title and some of the finest positional players of the age.