MAX EUWE: THE BIOGRAPHY

Author: Alexander Münninghoff

New in Chess (2001)

351 pages (paperback)

$29.95

Reviewed by Donald K. McKim

Dr. Max Euwe (1901-1981) won the World Championship of Chess in 1935 with a match victory over Alexander Alekhine. The Dutchman’s triumph shocked the chess world. He lost the title two years later, in 1937. To many people, Euwe was not a “real world champion.” His day job was teaching mathematics in a girl’s secondary school and he essentially won the World’s Championship in his “spare time.” Since he was not a full-time professional chessplayer and held the title only briefly, his achievements and reputation have suffered.

Münninghoff’s book sets out to correct these impressions. This edition is an English translation of the 1976 Dutch edition with a new final chapter added. It is an interesting account of Euwe’s life, his chess career, and finally his work for FIDE and his involvement in the 1972 Fischer-Spassky match. What emerges is the picture of a dedicated, persistent player who has been called a “genius of order” and “the chess logician.” Euwe brought his world title under the aegis of FIDE and thus had a significant impact on the world chess scene for over forty years. He wrote more than seventy chess books, a number of which are still in print today. This far exceeds the number of books written by any other World Champion. The author characterizes Euwe as “the embodiment of solid middle-class values, law and order and a level-headed scientific approach” to chess.

In the early 1920’s, Max Euwe emerged on the Dutch chess scene in the midst of his academic studies in mathematics as the best Dutch player. In his autumn 1923 tour of simultaneous games, he scored 405 wins out of 445 games, with 22 losses, and 18 draws. He averaged 5.3 minutes per game. He won the 1924 Christmas tournament at Hastings, dominating the ten-player event. To support himself, Euwe took positions teaching mathematics on the secondary school level. He met and married Caro Bergman and received his doctoral degree in physics and mathematics in 1926. When he won the Dutch championship, he had a reputation for displaying “proverbial courtesy and amiability: never a cross word, no condescending remarks about another person’s play, no signs of arrogance when points of chess were being discussed.”

A 1926, 5 1/2 to 4 1/2 loss in a match with Alekhine further catapulted Euwe into visibility in the chess world. In August 1927, Euwe published his first chess book and was the writer of a regular chess column in several newspapers. In that year also, Alekhine defeated Capablanca in Buenos Aires for the World Chess Championship. At tournaments in Bad Kissingen in 1928 and Carlsbad in 1929, Euwe did well and won the title “Amateur World Champion” in 1928.

Euwe lost matches to Bogolyubov (1928) and Capablanca (1931), but one evening in 1934 his friend Hans Kmoch persuaded him to make a run for the World Championship with a challenge to Alekhine. Euwe acquiesced. He said, “…at that point the decision had in fact been made: I would challenge Alekhine for the World Championship! This decision didn’t happen by chance, it was preordained.”

When the 1935 World Championship match began in Amsterdam, Alekhine said just before his departure to Holland: “I am certain of victory over Euwe. At this moment I do not see a player able to compete with me.” But Alekhine’s bravado was misplaced. Euwe won the match 15 1/2 to 14 1/2 to become the World Chess Champion. While this victory was unexpected, Euwe was acclaimed by those who knew him. Rudolf Spielmann wrote: “In the first place I want to express my joy and admiration that the chess throne has now been ascended, not only by such an outstanding master, but also by such an engaging person. I will leave aside the question of whether the new World Champion exceeds his predecessors, the threesome of Lasker-Capablanca-Alekhine, in playing strength, but what is certain is that this time a true nobleman of the spirit, a colleague with a warm heart, in short, a gentleman through and through has fought his way to the highest chess honor.” Euwe, as a “non-elite” of the chessplaying world was an easy figure to identify with for popular audiences.

A decisive action by Euwe occurred within a few months of his World Championship victory when Euwe involved FIDE in the arrangement of future title matches. Chaos and squabbling had typically marked past attempts to arrange such matches. Euwe’s personal efforts led to the acceptance of his proposals for putting the championship title under the purview of FIDE, a system that remained intact for a number of decades.

Euwe quickly agreed to a return match against Alekhine. Funding for the event was made possible by a number of Dutch interests who wanted the match to take place in Holland, in 1937. This time Euwe lost, 15 1/2 to 9 1/2. He managed to win a five game mini-match, which had been part of the contract. But overall, Alekhine was the victor: 17 1/2 to 12 1/2. Euwe had badly underestimated Alekhine’s strength. Euwe said, “When I became World Champion in 1935, I played worse than Alekhine, and when he beat me two years later I played better than him. It’s true: it is extremely rare for a World Champion to defend his title successfully. Julius Caesar already said it: to keep what you have conquered is harder than to conquer it in the first place.”

Euwe kept his distance from the game, returning to his teaching, though he did score a tie with Alekhine and Reschevsky for fourth place in the 1938 AVRO tournament where he won his first victory over Capablanca. The war years, during World War II, found Euwe working and surviving. He took a leading role in establishing the method for the next World Champion to emerge. Alekhine had died in 1946 and there was no clear way for a new champion to be selected. Euwe proposed a Candidates’ tournament in which the leading candidates would be invited to play and the winners would play each other in a championship match. In an odd turn, at the 1947 FIDE congress, Euwe was declared World Champion on a vote that took place before the Russian delegates arrived. When they did, plans for the Candidates Tournament were put in motion and Euwe, after a two hour “reign” as World Champion, was deposed!

Euwe spent a short period as a “chess professional,” participating in tournaments and making tours. He was chosen to be on the first official FIDE list of grandmasters in 1949. The ascendancy of Russian chess had begun and nine of the fifteen on the list were Russians.

For the next years, Euwe participated in some tournaments and matches, as well as Chess Olympiads. He lost the Dutch championship in 1954 in a match that ended the “Euwe era.”

The emergence of computers captured Euwe’s attentions and he turned his energies into their study. He moved into the academic world and became a full professor at the Economische Hogeschool of Tilburg in 1964. He participated in Chess Olympiads three more times.

Euwe’s connections with chess were to take one more turn. In 1970, he was selected by the delegates of the world chess federation FIDE as President, by acclamation. He was successful in saving the “match of the century” of Fischer vs. Spassky in Reykjavik in 1972 and served as President for eight years. He died of heart trouble in Amsterdam on November 26, 1981.

Münninghoff’s biography displays Euwe as a remarkable person whose devotion to chess was strong and deep. He gained universal respect as a person and a player. The book provides a compelling narrative of Euwe’s chess life and is enriched further by Euwe’s own analysis of fifty of his games. One hopes this English edition will bring Euwe’s story to the attention of a new generation of readers, those who know little about him but who now may also be stimulated to study his books and to reflect on the life of this remarkable chess champion.