Book Review

My Best Games of Chess 1908-1937 by Alexander Alekhine

Alekhine's analysis, while occasionally deep and insightful, is for the most part highly unobjective. He routinely neglects to mention defensive oversights by his opponents in order to make a dubious attack by him seem like a forced win. Furthermore, his opening analysis - more than dated, which one would have to accept for analysis this old - is simply incredibly weak and superficial in this book. Many of the lines he criticises harshly are now considered the "book." It almost seems that the more rudely he treats a line, the more respect that line currently receives.

But the most appalling thing of all about this book is that a good number of games have been doctored or made up out of whole cloth. Just a few of the most egregious examples:

Volume 1
(1) On page 69, he discusses a game he played as White in Moscow 1915 which ended with 5 queens on the board. In fact, his opponent Grigoriev had White, and the game provided never happened (White played 11.O-O-O, not 11.NPxP). The line he cites as the game actually come from an analysis of the game.
(2) On page 79, he changes the ending of the game. The game proceeded 36....QN5 not 36....BR5!
(3) On page 84, he claims Mieses resigned. In fact the game went on an additional 15 moves.
(4) On page 107, he changes the move order to highlight some analysis.
(5) On page 109, he claims he played 27.QK3! In fact, he played a weaker move and the game dragged on 21 more moves.
(6) On page 240, he cites a game Alekhine-Tenner 1907 which ended with a mate in 15. In fact, the line given comes from post-mortem analysis of a 23-move draw.

Volume 2
On page 250, he changes the ending of the game. He had played the weaker 22....PxB not 22....QxB leading to mate.

I find it truly disgusting that Alekhine would find it necessary to mutilate his games in order to enhance his chess reputation. That he may have done, but in my eyes he has destroyed his reputation as a human being. After learning this about his games, I find it easy to believe that he is in fact the author of the anti-Jewish diatribes that appeared under his byline and whose authorship he vehemently denied. Yeah, right, are we supposed to believe him?

[edited and reposted]