The Hague 1921

◇Ten at The Hague

The field mixed generations. Alekhine, Rubinstein and Tartakower were the masters in their prime; Jacques Mieses and Georg Marco were veterans of the pre-war era; Géza Maróczy had come back from retirement and, as one modern account puts it, could no longer grind out the narrow advantages that had once been his trade. Boris Kostić and Frederick Yates filled out the international contingent, and the Dutch entries were Jacques Davidson and a 20-year-old Amsterdam mathematics student named Max Euwe, who had taken the first of his Dutch championships that same year.

Alekhine outplayed the field in every phase. He beat Davidson, Marco, Maróczy, Mieses, Euwe, Yates and Rubinstein, and gave up only the two draws. The last of those wins — against Yates, in a queenside-majority endgame — and his defensive work against Marco are still cited as instructive, and he finished the event without a loss.

◇Rubinstein's charge

Rubinstein lost his very first game, to Tartakower, and responded by abandoning his usual manner entirely. He took up the King's Gambit with White and went in for early complications with Black — a rare sight, one commentator notes, in so stolid a player suddenly playing madcap chess. It worked: he won six games in a row and pulled level with the leaders.

Going into round nine Alekhine stood on 7, with Rubinstein and Tartakower half a point behind on 6½. The pairing was Alekhine–Rubinstein. Alekhine solved the opening cleanly, reached a won endgame and finished with mate on the board — a game long counted among his best. Tartakower drew with Maróczy and took second on 7; Rubinstein finished third on 6½.

For Rubinstein the loss cost more than a place. He had seniority in the queue for Capablanca and a verbal promise of a match; a candidates match against Alekhine was floated for March 1922 and never took place. Alekhine's letter of challenge to the champion followed his 1921 run — "I should be grateful if you would consider the present letter as an official challenge to a match for the World Chess Championship" — though it would be 1927 before the two sat down in Buenos Aires.

◇At the other end of the table

Kostić and Maróczy shared fourth on 5½, Mieses took sixth on 4, Marco seventh on 3 and Davidson eighth on 2½. Euwe, still an amateur and years away from his own world title, was ninth on 2 — clearly a rising talent, and just as clearly still being made to look ordinary by the masters above him.

Yates had the cruellest tournament of his life: he lost his first eight games in a row before beating Davidson in the last round to finish on 1. Theory, meanwhile, moved in the semi-open games rather than the hypermodern ones — the Nimzowitsch Sicilian and the Dutch Defence were what The Hague contributed to the books.