Salo Flohr
- November 19, 2025
Participant of the 1950 Candidates Tournament
Chessmetrics Ranking: World number two for a total of ten months in 1935 and 1936
Tournament Career: Winner of 14 super-tournaments:
4-time winner of the Hastings International Chess Meeting
2-time winner of the Moscow Chess Tournament
and several others…
Chess Olympiads: Silver and bronze team medals, two gold, one silver, and one bronze individual medal.
What earned him this:
Salo Flohr was initially a Czechoslovak and later a Soviet chess master, who in the 1930s was a serious contender to challenge Alekhine for the world championship title. He was a chess player who favored a calm positional style, yet was extraordinarily effective. He excelled in tournaments, matches, and chess Olympiads. In matches, he achieved draws with both a former and a future world champion – Euwe and Botvinnik. However, he never managed to defeat Alekhine even once.
He won many major tournaments but also secured many second places right behind the dominant Alekhine. These results made him a serious contender for the world championship. However, his chances were buried by his last place at the famous AVRO 1938 tournament for the world’s top eight players and also by historical events.
Flohr fled from the Nazis from Czechoslovakia to the Soviet Union, and even there the war caught up with him when Hitler attacked the communist empire. The stress of the war years took its toll on the sensitive chess player, and after the war, he never reached his previous level. He managed to qualify for the first Candidates Tournament organized by FIDE in 1950, but he could no longer withstand the younger and more aggressive players. In the later years of his career, Flohr built a reputation as a drawish player.
In the 1930s, he had excellent results at the Olympiads, where he collected a total of six medals. He was part of the broader elite throughout the 1930s and 1940s, and according to historical rankings, he was the second in the world in the mid-1930s.
Best Games:
Salo Flohr vs Milan Vidmar
Nottingham 1936
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Miroslav Janeček graduated in English Philology at Palacký University Olomouc. Currently he works in Prague as a content editor for a large marketing company. His roots are in Opava - the historic and cultural centre of the Czech part of Silesia. That city is also the home of Slezan Opava, the chess club where Miroslav started to play chess, later went on to work as a youth coach and which he to this day proudly represents. As an aspiring chess publicist, he is the main author of articles on ChessDB.cz. In his free time, in addition to chess and writing, he also devotes himself to racket sports, history, and literature.