The best games of Alekhine's career.
Alekhine is a poet who creates a work of art out of something that would hardly inspire another man to send home a picture post card. - Max Euwe
During a Chess competition a Chessmaster should be a combination of a beast of prey and a monk. - Alexander Alekhine
When asked, "How is that you pick better moves than your opponents?", I responded: I'm very glad you asked me that, because, as it happens, there is a very simple answer. I think up my own moves, and I make my opponent think up his. - Alexander Alekhine
Oh! this opponent, this collaborator against his will, whose notion of Beauty always differs from yours and whose means (strength, imagination, technique) are often too limited to help you effectively! What torment, to have your thinking and your phantasy tied down by another person! - Alexander Alekhine
I study chess eight hours a day, on principle. - Alexander Alekhine
I am Alekhine, chess champion of the world. I need no passport. – Alexander Alekhine
What I do is not play but struggle. – Alexander Alekhine
I have had to work long and hard to eradicate the dangerous delusion that, in a bad position, I could always, or nearly always, conjure up some unexpected combination to extricate me from my difficulties. – Alexander Alekhine
Chess for me is not a game, but an art. Yes, and I take upon myself all those responsibilities which an art imposes on its adherents. – Alexander Alekhine
To win against me, you must beat me three times: in the opening, the middlegame and the endgame. – Alexander Alekhine
He lived in and for chess like no one before him, nor any since until Fischer. – Taylor Kingston (on Alekhine)
No master before or since sank himself with greater gusto into what Vladimir Nabokov called Caissa’s “abysmal depths." – Larry Parr (on Alekhine)
I just can’t win in such a way! – Jose R. Capablanca (on an Alekhine combination in the 11th game of their title match)
It was impossible to win against Capablanca; against Alekhine it was impossible to play. – Paul Keres
Against Alekhine you never knew what to expect. Against Capablanca, you knew what to expect, but you couldn't prevent it! – George Thomas
Alekhine's chess is like a god's. – Chess World Magazine
In playing through an Alekhine game one suddenly meets a move which simply takes one's breath away. – C. H. O'D. Alexander
Alekhine is a poet who creates a work of art out of something that would hardly inspire another man to send home a picture post card. – Max Euwe
Capablanca never took his eyes off the chorus; Alekhine never looked up from his pocket chess set. – A patron who took both players to a show in 1922
Capablanca was the greatest talent, but Alekhine was the greatest in his achievements. – Mikhail Botvinnik
Sir, I am the book! – Alexander Alekhine (to a player who, not realizing who Alekhine was, had commented on each of Alekhine's moves with, "The book says…")
The openings consist of Alekhine's games with a few variations. – Source Unknown
While he was hospitalized (during WW I) after being wounded (a contusion of the spine), he became the strongest blindfold chess player in the world. That's how great this guy was. I mean, when normal people go to the hospital, they are totally sad and in pain. Instead, he devoted himself to blindfold chess and became the best in the world in an extremely short period of time. You have to love this guy. – Terry Crandall (on Alekhine)
Since we are, of course, the two best blindfold players in the world, I think it would be better if we had recourse to a chessboard and men. – Alexander Alekhine (to Reti when they disagreed during a blindfold analysis session)
Analyze! Analyze! Analyze! That was the doctor’s motto, and his deeply ingrained habit of investigating every line was obviously unsuitable in rapid transit. – Arthur Dake (on Alekhine's relative weakness in rapid play)
I learned a lot about how the world champion analyzed chess positions. Alekhine taught me to sit on my hands and not to play the first move that came to mind, no matter how good it looked. He examined everything, whipping through an astonishing number of variations. – Arnold Denker
Alekhine's attacks came suddenly, like destructive thunderstorms that erupted from a clear sky. – Garry Kasparov
I can comprehend Alekhine's combinations well enough; but where he gets his attacking chances from and how he infuses such life into the very opening - that is beyond me. – Rudolf Spielmann
I can see the combinations as well as Alekhine, but I cannot get into the same positions. – Rudolf Spielmann
Somehow the match will never take place. – Alexander Alekhine (on his avoidance of a rematch with Capablanca)
It is bad to be a self-centered manipulative alcoholic liar who seduces women for their money. – Taylor Kingston (on Alekhine, of course)
Alexander Alekhine may have been a drunk and anti-Semite, but he certainly had manners: he showed up for the last game of his losing match in 1935 wearing a tuxedo, and gave his "Hurrah to the new World Champion! – Alex Yermolinsky
Alekhine grew out of the combination. He is in love with it. Everything strategic is only a preperation for him, almost a neccessary evil. The stunning blow, the unexpected thrust - this is his element... His imagination catches fire in the attack on the king. - Emanuel Lasker
Alekhine evidently possesses the most remarkable chess memory that has ever existed. It is said that he remembers by heart all the games played by the leading masters during the past 15-20 years. - Jose Raul Capablanca
Alekhine is dear to the chess world, mainly as an artist. Typical of him are deep plans, far-sighted calculation and inexhaustible imagination. However, his main strength, which developed from year to year, was his combinative vision: he saw combinations with great ease and accuracy. For this reason Alekhine's combinations possessed such staggering, crushing force... Yes, this truly was an amazing gift! - Mikhail Botvinnik
The name of Alekhine is illuminated by the brilliance of his chess combinations. Alekhine possessed an exceptionally rich chess imagination, and his skill in creating combinativ ve complications is incomparable. it should be mentioned that Alekhine had a mastery of technique, and his striving for combinations was not an end to itself, but stemmed logically from the demands of the position. - Vasily Smyslov
In Alekhine we are captivated by his exceptional combinative talent and his whole-hearted love for chess. - Mikhail Tal
I consider Alexander Alekhine to be a very great player. Possibly, because for me and for many he remains an enigma. He considered that chess was closest to an art, and he was able to demonstrate this with his optimistic, eternally youthful play. - Boris Spassky
Alekhine is a player I've never really understood; yet, strangely, if you've seen one Alekhine game you've seen them all. He always wanted a superior center; he maneuvered his pieces towards the King's-side, and around the twenty-fifth move began to mate his opponent. – Robert Fischer
Alekhine has never been a hero of mine, and I've never cared for his style of play. There is nothing light or breezy about it; it worked for him, but it could scarcely work for anybody else. - Robert Fischer
His conceptions were gigantic, full of outrageous and unprecedented ideas. It's hard to find mistakes in his games, but in a sense his whole method was a mistake.
– Robert Fischer (on Alekhine)
He had great imagination; he could see more deeply into a situation than any other player in chess history... Many consider Alekhine a great opening theoretician, but I don't think he was. He played book lines, but didn't know them very well. He always felt that his natural powers would get him out of any dilemma. - Robert Fischer
The next (after Steinitz) changes were outlined by Alekhine, but applied and developed by Botvnnik - the scientific approach to chess... Alekhine worked a great deal at home. He won a number of well-known games, by right from the opening holding his opponent in a vice prepared at home. And his grip was strong: after seizing his victim, he would no longer release him. - Anatoly Karpov
In contrast to Fischer with his propensity for clarity, and to Karpov who grew up on Capablanca's games, from my early years I was enormously influenced by Alekhine's play and won over by his unprecedented feat in the 1927 match. I admired the refinement of his ideas, and I tried as far as possible to imitate his furious attacking style, with its sudden and thunderous sacrifices. - Garry Kasparov
Alekhine definitely was a workaholic. He had a strategic talent and was the first player who had a conscious feel for dynamics. - Vladimir Kramnik
Fortune favors the bold, especially when they are Alekhine. – Lodewijk Prins
His fantastic combinative vision was based on a sound positional foundation, and was the fruit of strong, energetic strategy. Therefore Alekhine can safely be called the pioneer of the universal style of play, based on a close interweaving of stategic and tactical motifs. - Garry Kasparov
Kibitzing
