Vienna 1922

Staged by the Austrian Chess Federation in the first years after the Great War, Vienna 1922 gathered nearly every star of the day — Alekhine, Tartakower, Réti, Grünfeld, Tarrasch, Maróczy, Bogoljubow and Spielmann — with only Capablanca and Lasker missing. From that field the 42-year-old Akiba Rubinstein produced what admirers called the supreme result of his career: an undefeated 11½ out of 14 that finished a point and a half clear of the pack and, for one last time, let the chess world dream that he might yet play for the crown.

◇A field without the champions

Vienna 1922 was one of the first great international tournaments after the First World War, part of a crowded revival year that also brought London, Hastings and Teplitz-Schönau. The Austrian Chess Federation ran it as the master event of its congress, a fifteen-player single round-robin held in Vienna from mid-November into early December. Reigning champion José Raúl Capablanca and former champion Emanuel Lasker were both absent, but almost everyone else of note took part.

It was also a tournament where the hypermodern current was plainly felt. The young school's ideas surfaced across the boards — Grünfeld beat Alekhine with the defence that bears his name — even as most games still opened with the classical 1.e4 and 1.d4. Rudolf Spielmann defaulted two of his games, against Alekhine and Maróczy, so a handful of players finished with an uneven number of contests.

◇Rubinstein at his apogee

Rubinstein, then 42 and thought to be past his best, played the best sustained chess of his later years. He went through the fortnight without a loss and finished on 11½/14, a point and a half ahead of Tartakower on 10 and two and a half clear of Alekhine. Tartakower, at the height of his own powers, made his usual fast start and chased first place, while the veteran Austrian Heinrich Wolf held on to third.

Rubinstein's last games were some of his best: his win over Bogoljubow took the tournament's first brilliancy prize, he beat Spielmann in a fine game, and he beat Alekhine for what turned out to be the last time in his career. First place was decided against Tartakower, where Rubinstein saved a difficult rook ending of real theoretical importance. The win had a bitter sequel: Austrian border guards later confiscated much of his prize money.

“For fans of the great Rubinstein this was one last chance to dream that he might yet battle for the world championship title.”

“For a student learning chess there may be no better place to start than Rubinstein's games at Vienna 1922, a crystallization of everything that classical chess was about.”

◇Wolf's finest hour, and a lasting record

Third place on 9½ was the result of a lifetime for Heinrich Wolf, a journeyman Austrian master who beat both Alekhine and Bogoljubow and never did as well again; he died in 1943, a victim of the Nazi persecution of Europe's Jews. Alekhine, on the other hand, had one of the strangest tournaments of his career at Vienna, out of form and out of sorts even while he was winning tournaments elsewhere.

For Rubinstein the tournament remained a high-water mark that historians would return to. Larry Evans devoted an entire book to it, and later writers held up Rubinstein's games here as a crystallisation of everything classical chess was about — the last flowering of a great career that would fade into illness within a decade.