World Chess Championship 1948
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The 1948 World Chess Championship was a tournament played to determine a new World Chess Champion following the death of the previous champion Alexander Alekhine in 1946.
Previously, a new World Champion had won the title by defeating the former champion in a match. With Alekhine's death, this obviously was not possible. So FIDE, the international chess federation, took control of the championship, and decided to organise a tournament to decide the new world champion. The tournament is important historically because it marked the passing of control of the World title to FIDE.
The 1938 AVRO tournament was used as the basis for the 1948 Championship. That tournament had brought together the eight players who were, by general acclamation, the best players in the world at the time. Two of the participants at AVRO - Alekhine and former world champion José Raúl Capablanca - had died; but it was decided that the other six participants at AVRO would play a quadruple round robin tournament. These players were: Max Euwe (from Holland); Mikhail Botvinnik, Paul Keres and Salo Flohr (from the Soviet Union); and Reuben Fine and Samuel Reshevsky (from the USA).
The proposal was modified slightly, in that the Soviet Union was allowed to replace Flohr with Vassily Smyslov, a young player who had emerged during the war years and was obviously stronger.
Reuben Fine elected not to play. (There is discussion on why at the Reuben Fine page). There was a proposal that he should be replaced with Miguel Najdorf, but in the end the tournament was played with only five players, and as a five-cycle round robin.
The tournament was played partly in The Hague, and partly in Moscow.
The tournament was won convincingly by Botvinnik, with 14 points out of 20, making Botvinnik the sixth World Chess Champion. Smyslov came second with 11 points, just ahead of Keres and Reshevsky on 10.5. Former champion Euwe was in bad form, and finished last with 4 out of 20.
Since Keres lost to Botvinnik in the first four cycles, suspicions are sometimes raised that Keres was forced to "throw" games to allow Botvinnik to win. This issue is discussed in the Paul Keres article.
[edit] External Links
FIDE World Championship events 1948-1990 by Mark Weeks.
