I examined the position after Alekhine's 22 Rfe1, "the most subtle move of the game, by which White prepares the important f4"

Why I wondered would Euwe then exchange Queens, when it is well known that Queen and Knight combine very well together?

I gave the problem to Shredder 8, and it produced the following shadow boxing variation that could have occurred if Queens stayed on:

22...Rgd8 23 Qf4 Rd6 24 Qb4 R6d7 25 a5 h6 26 Qf4 Qg6 27 Qe3 Qf5

Offering the h pawn, but if Black does nothing, White pries open the Queenside with a6 and c4-c5

28 Rb4 Re7 29 a6 b5 30 Reb1 Rde8 31 Qxh6 Nd3 32 Bxd3 Qxd3

click for larger view

Alekhine said "More promising was 10...Qb3! 11.Bxg7 Rg8 12.Bh6 Nd7 etc., with a strong initiative for the pawn."

One thing is to acquire a strong initiative ... and another thing is to say "missed a win!"

<Unfortunately, the CD features an 'analysis' of Alekhine's play and of his writings. All you have to do is read the 'Table of Contents' (a sort of summary of 23 Alekhine games) to see how harshly and negatively Huebner assesses both. For the record, I also looked carefully at several of the heavily-annotated games, which are in the same unimaginative spirit but more boring. Anyway, in Huebner's view of the world, Alekhine had terrible weaknesses in every single aspect of the game, including technical and psychological ones. Here's his entire summary of Alekhine's play and annotation in Game#2: 'Ruining the pawn structure-materialism; underestimating the active counterplay of the opponent-strategic deficiencies in the opening; bad positional judgment-defensive possibilities of the opponent are not exhaustively scrutinized -lack of criticism towards the own conduct of the attack.' [apparently Huebner the linguist didn't check the English translation for grammatical errors, which are frequent; I've corrected some of the spelling]. Or Game#6: 'Overestimating the initiative, underestimating defensive possibilities; this brings about a wrong picture of the course of the game-self-propaganda-lack of criticism towards the own play-materialism-lack of immersion in concrete, tactical defensive possibilities-strategical deficiencies-harmful brilliance-lack of positional judgement and lack of the will to thorough research in the endgame, maybe due to a fear of unpleasant discoveries.' Needless to say, Alekhine won both of these games in very nice style. Many of these 23 analyses are distorted in a negative direction, apparently by Huebner's egotistical point of view. In the very first example (#1), he gives a one-move snippet from a game Alekhine-Romanovsky, St Petersburg 1909. Alekhine gets a '?' for that move, a pawn sacrifice, and Huebner launches into a typically extended analysis of his own suggested alternative, after which he has Black playing provocatively and eventually coming out clearly worse (one analysis goes for 18 moves). Huebner concludes: 'Alekhine's optimism in regard to his attacking chances is really amazing. Throughout his life he did not lose such an excessive faith in his own tactical opportunities.' But two moves into the analysis, Huebner ignores several attractive (and I think good) alternatives if Black doesn't play so riskily, blithely providing only a single line in which Black commits suicide. Alekhine's move, moreover, is extremely creative, if eventually proven to be bad; one would never know that in the full game (annotated in the database and not even given a link!), it takes a very difficult sequence to ultimately turn the game against him. Regarding Alekhine's annotations, one might do well to remember that he was first and foremost a player. Although he enjoyed writing about chess and improved his play thereby, I'm sure that the sort of obsessive immersion that would have been required to match the grindings of Fritz, with psychoanalytic sessions on the side, would not have benefited either his health or his play. His writings do, however, reflect the imaginative nature of the struggle, which is why so many generations have enjoyed them. A few more snippets about Alekhine from Huebner (sorry, but this is sort of fun): 'gross tactical inaccuracy during liquidation-sloppy calculation-underestimating the defence', 'strategical misjudgments; overestimating the own possibilities (blatantly)-a lot of mistakes in detail-bad technique in a won position', ' strategical deficiencies of the highest order in the opening and in the middlegame', 'lack of strategical understanding-ruining the own pawn structure-inappropriate play for the attack; impatience-premature breakdown', ' playing for traps; addiction to combinations-lack of interest and feeling for positional subtleties; impatience-destruction of the own pawn structure-overestimating the initiative-lack of precision in calculating variations-tirelessness-unperturbed by changes of fortune', ' -sloppiness-chess blindness.' Again, the above quotes refer mostly to victories, e.g., over Nimzowitsch, Bernstein, and Mieses. A funny question to ponder is whether Alekhine's rating would have gone up or down after thorough tutoring by Huebner-my guess is the latter. Certainly down if one believes in positive feedback: In the 23 games considered in this 'Table of Contents', I count only 4 or perhaps 5 positive comments, 3 of them in one sentence!>