With modern grandmasters routinely battling each other over the board multiple times every year, it may be hard for chess devotees today to conceive of the excitement generated by the great New York Tournament of 1924, held 100 years ago this year at the Almanac Hotel at 71st Street and Broadway.
Top players played far fewer games back in the day, and tournaments featuring the world’s best were even rarer. Consider: For the top three finishers in New York — former world champion Emanuel Lasker, reigning world champion Jose Raul Capablanca and future world champion Alexander Alekhine — the 11-player double round-robin event was the only classical chess they played the entire year.
What starts as a kind of Trompowsky morphs into a QGD Cambridge Springs. Marshall as White gives up the bishop pair for some good pressure on the kingside, smoothly assembling a strong attacking array after 20. dxc5 Bxc5 21. Kh1 Re8 22. e4. White pounces when Black allows the game to open up to his opponent’s advantage: 22…Bd4? 23. Nxc6 bxc6 24. e5! Ng4 25. Qh7+ Kf8 26. g3! Qb6 27. Bf5!, undeterred by Bogoljubov’s threats against the White king.
We can’t begin to do justice to all the subtleties in the Queen’s Gambit Exchange, but Lasker as Black if the first to unbalance the game with a provocative early knight sortie: 9. 0-0 Nh5!? 10. Be5! f5 11. Rc1 Nf6 12. Bxf6! gxf6! 13. Nh4! — the start of a quick kingside mobilization at a time when much of Black’s queenside army is still trying to get into the game.
Once again Lasker walks the tightrope back to equality after 29. g5?! Kg8 30. Nxd5 Bf7 31. zNxe7+ Qxe7 32. g4, and — just at the first adjournment — could have guaranteed the draw with the stunning line 32…Rc2+ 33. Kg3 Re2 34. g6 h4+! 35. Rxh4 Rxe3+ 36. Kg2 Re2+ 37. Kf1 Re1+ 38. Kxe1 Qxh4+, and Black has at least a perpetual check.
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