Monday, February 13, 2017

Capablanca's View of his Draw with Czerniak

Credit: Miguel Sanchez', Jose Raul Capablanca: A Chess Biography (McFarland: 2015), p. 453.
We already saw that Capablanca complained to Czerniak in 1939 that his powers are slipping due to his age. Czerniak adds in the same source given in the link (Toldot Ha'Sachmat -- quoted in Ad Ha'Ragli Ha'Acharon, by Afek and Volman, p. 33) that the draw 'annoyed [Capablanca] not a little: 'I can see the headlines: Capablanca is getting old!' he told me."

This certainly agrees with what Capablanca wrote here -- in an article for Critica, Aug. 25th, 1939 -- about this game. Obviously, he felt that he needed to justify his disappointing result in that game. As the olympiad started the day before, this article was published before he got his "revenge" -- a famous victory over Czerniak in the finals, which was widely published (it is given in Sanchez's biography here as 'one of his memorable productions'). Czerniak, in Toldot Ha'Shachmat, adds that Capablanca's combination 'fell on him like a blow on the head'.

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