AVRO Tournament 1938 — The Eight Greatest Players in the World

The Field: Eight Players, No Argument

The selection of players for AVRO 1938 required almost no debate. Alexander Alekhine was the reigning world champion, having regained the title from Max Euwe in 1937. Euwe himself was a natural inclusion as the man Alekhine had just defeated. José Raúl Capablanca, the former world champion who had lost the title to Alekhine in 1927 under circumstances he considered irregular, represented the old guard of chess mastery. Samuel Reshevsky was the dominant American player of the period, a child prodigy from Poland who had become a formidable positional force. Salo Flohr, the Czech grandmaster, had been widely touted as a future world champion throughout the early 1930s. Mikhail Botvinnik was the rising Soviet talent, already winning major international events. Reuben Fine was the second American in the field, a deeply theoretical player and a future author of some of the most influential chess literature of the twentieth century. Paul Keres, the young Estonian, completed the eight. Together they represented every serious claim on chess at the highest level. The World Chess Championship question hung over the entire tournament.

Format and Setting: Chess Across the Netherlands

AVRO chose an unusual format for the tournament. Rather than fixing a single venue, they spread the rounds across fourteen Dutch cities, with the players travelling by train between rounds. Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Groningen, Arnhem, Hertogenbosch, Breda, Middelburg, Zutphen, Leiden, Haarlem, Eindhoven, Tilburg and The Hague each hosted a round. The practical effect was exhausting. The players were chess celebrities in the Netherlands, particularly Euwe, who had held the world title as recently as the previous year and was a genuine national hero. Crowds gathered in each city. AVRO broadcast the games by radio, making this one of the earliest major chess events to receive live audio coverage across a country. The double round-robin format, with each player meeting every other player twice across fourteen rounds, was designed to produce a definitive result without any luck of the draw. It was the most rigorous test imaginable of sustained chess excellence over a concentrated period, far more demanding than a two-player match in some respects because every competitor needed to maintain form against seven different opponents simultaneously. For famous chess players accustomed to long individual matches, this was a different kind of pressure.

The Games: Quality Under Pressure

The chess produced at AVRO 1938 was of extraordinary quality, as would be expected from the field. Several games from the tournament have passed into the permanent literature of the game. Reuben Fine's clean technical victories demonstrated his deep grounding in positional theory. Botvinnik's games showed the systematic, controlled approach that would carry him to the world title in 1948 and keep him in championship contention for two decades. Capablanca, approaching fifty and in declining health, nonetheless produced games of effortless economy that reminded observers why he had been considered close to unbeatable throughout the 1920s. Alekhine's play was less consistent than might have been expected from a reigning champion, though his combinative talent produced several remarkable moments. Keres played with exceptional energy and precision throughout, and his result, tied for first at 22 years old against this field, remains one of the most impressive performances in the history of tournament chess. These games belong alongside the great encounters documented in famous chess games, reflecting the full depth of chess history at its peak.

The Final Standings and the Tiebreak Question

When the final round was complete, Keres and Fine had each accumulated 8.5 points from 14 games. Botvinnik stood third on 7.5, with Alekhine and Euwe sharing fourth on 7 points. Reshevsky scored 6.5, Capablanca 6, and Flohr 4.5. The tiebreak between Keres and Fine was resolved in favour of Keres on the basis of their individual results against each other and against the higher-placed opponents. Keres had beaten Fine directly. Fine disputed the tiebreak methodology at the time, and the controversy was not fully resolved, but Keres was generally credited with first place in the historical record. The margin between the top four players was extremely small. Botvinnik's 7.5 points and Alekhine's 7 points placed them only a game and a half behind the leaders, and any of the top four might plausibly have claimed the right to challenge for the world title. That no match resulted from AVRO 1938 is one of the lasting organisational failures of pre-war chess governance.

The World Championship Impasse

FIDE, the international chess federation founded in 1924, attempted after AVRO 1938 to assert its authority over the world championship succession. The logical consequence of the tournament was a challenge match between Keres, as the nominal winner, and Alekhine as the reigning champion. Negotiations began. Alekhine was not cooperative. He had financial requirements and venue preferences that shifted across months of correspondence. Fine, as co-winner, also had a theoretical claim, and there was briefly discussion of a three-way arrangement. Meanwhile Botvinnik, supported by Soviet chess authorities, was pressing his own candidacy. Euwe remained a potential rematch opponent. The negotiating landscape was intractable even before the political situation deteriorated. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, all international travel for chess became impossible. Alekhine spent the war years in Nazi-occupied Europe under conditions that have been debated and contested by historians ever since. He died in a Portuguese hotel room in March 1946 with no world championship match having been arranged. FIDE organised a tournament in 1948 to determine a new champion, which Botvinnik won. The direct line from AVRO 1938 to the post-war championship was broken entirely. The story of how World Chess Championships were governed, and who had authority over the title, was written and rewritten across this entire period.

The Legacy: Keres, the Greatest Who Never Won

Paul Keres lived until 1975 and remained one of the strongest players in the world for much of his life. He came within reach of the world championship on multiple occasions after the war, finishing second in the candidates tournament in 1953, 1956, 1959 and 1962. Soviet sports politics, the extraordinary strength of Botvinnik and later Tal, Petrosian and Spassky, and perhaps simple misfortune combined to deny him the title. His story is inseparable from AVRO 1938, which remains the moment when his claim was purest and most visible. Reuben Fine eventually withdrew from competitive chess to pursue a career in psychology, writing extensively on the psychoanalytic dimensions of the game. Botvinnik became world champion in 1948 and held the title, with interruptions, until 1963. Capablanca died of a stroke in 1942. The AVRO tournament itself stands in the historical record as both a peak of competitive chess and a monument to what was never resolved. The Jaques of London tradition of supporting competitive chess through the equipment that makes serious play possible runs through the entire period from which these players emerged, and the Staunton chess set they used was the product of that same tradition.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Who won the AVRO 1938 tournament and what were the final standings?

Paul Keres and Reuben Fine tied for first place with 8.5 points each out of a possible 14. Mikhail Botvinnik finished third on 7.5 points, followed by Alexander Alekhine and Max Euwe on 7 points, Samuel Reshevsky on 6.5, José Raúl Capablanca on 6, and Salo Flohr on 4.5. The tournament was a double round-robin, meaning each player met every other player twice. Keres won on tiebreak by performance in direct encounters, giving him the nominal first place, though Fine contested the tiebreak methodology at the time. Both players were widely considered the strongest challengers for the world title, but World War Two intervened before any match could be arranged with the reigning champion Alekhine.

Q: What was the AVRO company and why did it sponsor a chess tournament?

AVRO was the Dutch national broadcaster, the Algemeene Vereeniging Radio Omroep, founded in 1923. The organisation sponsored the tournament as a prestige cultural event and arranged for games to be broadcast by radio across the Netherlands, making AVRO 1938 one of the earliest major chess events to receive live radio coverage. The games were played across fourteen Dutch cities including Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Groningen and The Hague, with each round held in a different location to maximise public engagement. Max Euwe, the former world champion, was a national hero in the Netherlands, and the tournament drew considerable public attention throughout the country.

Q: Why did the AVRO tournament not lead to a world championship match?

Several obstacles prevented a world championship challenge following AVRO 1938. Alekhine, the reigning world champion, showed no appetite for defending his title against Keres or Fine under unfavourable conditions. Negotiations were protracted, with shifting financial demands and venue preferences on the champion's side. FIDE attempted to organise a match but lacked the authority and resources to compel Alekhine to participate. Botvinnik and Euwe also maintained competing claims. By September 1939 the German invasion of Poland had made international chess travel impossible. Alekhine died in March 1946 without having played either AVRO co-winner. FIDE eventually settled the title through a 1948 tournament, won by Botvinnik, breaking the direct succession from AVRO entirely.

Q: What is the significance of Paul Keres at AVRO 1938 in chess history?

Paul Keres was only 22 years old at AVRO 1938, making his shared first place one of the most striking performances by a young player in the history of major chess tournaments. AVRO 1938 marked the clearest peak of his claim to the world title. His career subsequently suffered from the war, the Soviet occupation of Estonia, and persistent difficulties in obtaining permission from Soviet authorities to compete freely. He came close to the world championship in the candidates tournaments of 1953, 1956, 1959 and 1962 but never won it. Keres is remembered as perhaps the greatest player in history never to have held the world title, and AVRO 1938 remains the moment when that title was most nearly within his grasp.