Book Review: Alexander Alekhine Complete Games Collection Volume 1: 1905-1920
The early Alekhine's games contain a lot of promise, and a lot of instruction, thanks to his clear style of analysis and annotation.
I’ve been studying Alexander Alekhine for the better part of the past year, and have for the most part focused on the beginning of his career as a citizen in the Russian Empire. This is the first book that I went through, and it contains 147 games, annotated by Alekhine himself, spanning from 1905 (at the ripe age of 13!) to 1920. This includes some games from Scheveningen 1913 (which is where Alekhine’s play really comes alive) and St. Petersburg 1914, plus many interesting matches and tournaments. The main bummer is that Alekhine’s tour into Europe gets cut short in 1914 due to WWI, and that’s where a lot of the more interesting games were played. Alekhine lived through two world wars and is one of the more interesting (and controversial) chess champions for this reason. However, even his games against run-of-the-mill club players (this book contains many of them) are great for learning from because of how clear his technique is.
This game collection is complete in the sense that it contains every game in that time period that Alekhine played and annotated — it’s not a thorough collection of all his games, only the ones he shared his thoughts on. Alekhine’s analysis is incisive and instructive, and is not thick on analysis. The translation from Russian to English seems excellent. The editors sometimes correct Alekhine’s analysis, and sometimes explain a variation a bit further, or explain their correction, but it’s not intrusive at all and is always clearly labeled in italics.
The book opens with a short biography of Alekhine’s life up to 1920. There are some interesting time gaps in the collection of games itself. This can probably be chalked up to the effects of the first World War, which began when Alekhine was competing in Mannheim. After this occurred, most of Alekhine’s games go back to somewhere in Russia.
Things start off with a veritable bang, as 13-year-old Alekhine subjects a rival to a fierce attack against the King’s Gambit:
It has to be said, this is the early Alekhine. This is not Alekhine anywhere close to his peak, and that is probably ironically why this first volume contains so many instructive games. Alekhine made analytical mistakes (though he shouldn’t be faulted — it’s impressive how often the editors do not have to correct his analysis). This is also Alekhine before he really started experimenting with hypermodernism.
That doesn’t mean that Alekhine didn’t experiment at all:
This is also not the only Benoni that shows up in this collection!
But by and large, Alekhine’s repertoire over this first part of his career consisted mostly of the Ruy Lopez, Vienna Game(!), and Queen’s Gambit as White, whereas with the black pieces Alekhine liked the Open Game, half the time opting for 2…Nc6, and the other half of the time opting for d6 (when he would usually steer towards the Hanham variation of the Philidor); and generally went for the Queen’s Gambit Declined against 1.d4. Alekhine also seemed to enjoy playing the French Defense quite a bit. Despite Alekhine’s strong adherence to classical principles, near the end of the book we get a glimpse into some of his changing thought: The Queen’s Indian Defense makes two appearances, and Alekhine also starts playing the English on rare occasion as well — one game transposes into a Maroczy Bind in the Sicilian Defense (though otherwise Sicilians were rather rare during this time period).
From a theoretical standpoint, these games are not particularly important, but it’s nice to see a player’s repertoire change and adjust over the years — also interesting to hear Alekhine talk about his waning interest in the Vienna Game as he grows tired of it. The story is familiar: Alekhine started with 1.e4 but we see more and more Queen’s Gambits from him as time goes on. But in his early career, the Ruy Lopez was still in his good graces.
Speaking of openings, Alekhine was very interested in it, which is why he seems so opinionated when analyzing certain opening lines, sometimes unfairly dismissing ideas, whether his or someone else’s as leading to equality at best (which we know is basically true of all sound openings today). This is a nice peek into his personality and tendencies as a chess player. But it also shows (I think), in the average accuracy of his openings. If we go by chesscom’s analysis, Alekhine’s average accuracy in the opening is 95.7% — this as a player in the early 1900s! He studied it in a way that many of his contemporaries didn’t and he reaped the dividends from it.
He was known for being a player who strove for the initiative at the cost of complications, and has a reputation for being a calculating machine. However, I found most of all that Alekhine simply had the imagination to look at different ideas, based on certain factors in positions. So, if you’re looking for what is possible if you look past the obvious veneer of any given chess position, Alekhine’s notes can be rather eye-opening. Just pay attention to the ideas he had considered — one gets the feeling that Alekhine rarely dismissed the first move of some idea on superficial grounds, which is the main takeaway for me from this first collection of games: Alekhine looked deeper!
Because of his playing style, many of his games were decided in the middlegame. Based on the arbitrary definition that chesscom’s analysis assigns to game phases, a full 2/3rds of the games in this first volume never reach the endgame phase — Alekhine simply cleans up before it gets to that point. His combinatory style makes his games — even these ones, which are generally not considered close to his best — very entertaining to watch play out. But it should be stated, Alekhine’s endgames are also very competent. His analysis of them is particularly instructive as well.
Most of the time he was extremely accurate, though occasionally he played a few stinkers. This is another instructive aspect of this game collection — he had some inconsistencies in how well he played and isn’t afraid to dissect his bad ideas in the process. The record I counted in this book was 121 wins, 11 losses, and 15 draws. That Alekhine annotated his own losses should be a good reminder — we don’t go wrong in imitating his own process.
Overall I’m very pleased with the book. I got the hardcovers for Vols 1 and 2 from House of Staunton and am glad for it. I got the idea to get these books from Neal Bruce because I had seen he had picked them up for study. The quality of the book is nice, and the pages and print are nice. It’s not a huge tome, and is a nice size for carrying around. These books are an English translation of the Russian versions produced by Russian Chess House. There are a total of four volumes, and only the first two are available in English. I am hopeful for the third and fourth volumes to be published in English, but I suspect that if this occurs, it will still take at least a few years before we see an English release for the next volume. Vol 1 originally came out in 2009 but wasn’t translated until 2018. Vol 2 came out in 2012, but wasn’t translated until 2021. That means that if things stay on course, we might see a Vol 3 English translation this year — fingers crossed.
In the meantime, I can recommend this book heartily for the games, though I think most important is Alekhine’s style of analysis and annotation. The games themselves are not what I would call particularly sexy, as they are nowhere near Alekhine’s prime play. In that respect, he’s just getting started! I’m looking forward to going through Volume 2 (1921-25) in the near future as well, because Volume 1 was so enjoyable both for the games and for the learning opportunity.