NEW YORK 1927

Author: Alexander Alekhine

Russell Enterprises (2011)

168 pages

$16.95

 

Reviewed by John Donaldson

 

Alexander Alekhine’s tournament book of NEW YORK 1924 has long been regarded as a classic, and the event one of the greatest ever held in the United States. Strangely, that is not the case for a tournament held three years later in the Big Apple even though it was arguably stronger top to bottom with Capablanca, Alekhine, Nimzowitsch, Vidmar, Spielmann and Marshall competing in a quadruple round robin and also the subject of a book by Alekhine as well.

 

Andy Soltis, in his insightful introduction to NEW YORK 1927, points out that Lasker, Bogoljubow and Rubinstein were missing among the world’s best in 1927 and that there were no surprises with the favorites taking the top spots (1. Capablanca 14.5 from 20; 2. Alekhine 10.5), but likely the biggest reason for this tournament not getting its due was the lack of a quality English language production at a reasonable price.

 

Previous to the publication of this volume, those without a command of German, the language that Alekhine wrote the original tournament book, had to choose between a truncated version published by Chess Digest and Jack Spence’s full-length version published with a stencil in a limited edition sans diagrams back in the 1950s. Spence belongs on the short list of heroes dedicated to preserving American chess history – he personally saved 90 percent plus of the games that have been preserved from U.S. Opens from 1946 to 1973 – and his works are now highly sought after with a copy of New York Chess Tournament 1927 going for $80.

 

Russell Enterprises has done a real service in making New York 1927, with Alekhine’s excellent comments, available to all in a first-rate translation in algebraic notation with plenty of diagrams.

 

Click to buy (or get more information about) NEW YORK 1927

 

I also highly recommend NEW YORK 1924