Max Euwe

World Champion 1935 – 1937, winner of the 1935 title match

Chessmetrics Ranking: World Number One for a total of 14 months in the years 1936 – 1937

Tournament Career: winner of eight super-tournaments:

3-time winner of Hastings Chess Congress, Amsterdam Chess Tournament

and a few others…

Chess Olympiads: silver and bronze individual medals

Why he deserved it:

Until recently, I would have without hesitation labeled Euwe as the weakest world champion, but he has since lost that title. Nevertheless, it is a fact that he lagged behind his fellow world champions of the last century, especially in the number of victories in super-tournaments. He was not the type of world champion who dominated and won everything he attended. His eight titles from super-tournaments are surpassed only by Steinitz among the world champions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, who played at a time when there were not many such tournaments.

Of course, anyone who became a world champion has had an amazing career and entered the realm of legends. We are talking about Euwe being one of the smaller legends in the hall of fame.

He became world champion in 1935 in a match against Alekhine, where the Russian giant apparently underestimated him and did not prepare properly for the match. Euwe’s narrow triumph was considered a shock. Alekhine prepared better for the rematch in 1937 and this time gave Euwe no chance, taking the title back. It is to Euwe’s credit that during the time he was world champion, he was indeed for a moment the best player in the world according to historical rankings – he was world number one for just over a year during 1936-1937.

His best period did not last long. It was practically only the thirties and part of the forties, which were significantly disrupted by the war. In 1948, Euwe was invited after Alekhine’s death to the 1948 World Championship tournament as the only living former world champion. However, before the tournament, he was already considered an outsider (also due to his age, which significantly exceeded that of the other players) and this was confirmed by the result, where he finished not only in last place out of five players but in last place by a wide margin. His last major super-tournament was the famous Candidates Tournament in Zurich 1953, when he was 52 years old.

After his career ended, Euwe remained in chess as an organizer and official. In the seventies, he was the president of FIDE.

Best Games:

Max Euwe vs Alexander Alekhine

World Championship Match 1935, Round 26