Alekhine's Most Famous Games
Alexander Alekhine was, by most accounts, the most creative attacking player in the history of chess. Across a career stretching from pre-revolutionary Russia through the turbulent decades of the twentieth century, he produced a body of games that still astonishes anyone who studies them. He didn’t just win — he constructed elaborate traps, calculated combinations of terrifying depth, and had an instinct for the initiative that bordered on the supernatural.
What follows is a look at seven of the most celebrated games of his career, each with an interactive board so you can step through the moves yourself. Use the ◀ ▶ buttons, click any move in the list, or hover over a board and press the arrow keys on your keyboard.
1. Alekhine vs. Nimzowitsch — San Remo, 1930
If you had to point to a single game that captures Alekhine at his best, many chess historians would choose this one. The San Remo tournament of 1930 was one of the strongest of the pre-war era, and Alekhine dominated it so thoroughly that he finished 3.5 points ahead of second place. His game against Aron Nimzowitsch, who was himself one of the five strongest players in the world at the time, is the jewel of the event.
The game is famous for what is now known as “Alekhine’s Gun” — a battery formed by stacking two rooks behind a queen on the same file. By placing his heavy pieces on the c-file, Alekhine creates pressure so total and inescapable that Nimzowitsch is eventually left in near-zugzwang: almost every move he can make worsens his position. The finale, with Nimzowitsch’s entire army tied down and helpless, is one of the most visually striking positions in classical chess.
Alekhine’s own annotations of this game, published in his second games collection, are among the finest pieces of chess writing he ever produced. He explains not just what he played but why — and in particular how the quiet, “waiting” moves in the endgame are actually the most powerful ones on the board.
2. Bogoljubov vs. Alekhine — Hastings, 1922
This game has been called one of the greatest ever played. Efim Bogoljubov was a formidable opponent — he would go on to challenge Alekhine for the world title twice — and at Hastings 1922 he was playing well. None of that mattered.
Playing Black in the Dutch Defense, Alekhine builds a complex position on the kingside while Bogoljubov overextends in pursuit of an attack that never materializes. Then, in a sequence that still astounds commentators, Alekhine sacrifices his queen, lets Bogoljubov promote a pawn to a new queen, sacrifices that, watches another pawn queen, and sacrifices that too — all while his own passed pawns charge down the board. The game ends with Bogoljubov on the brink of getting a fourth queen when he resigned. Andrew Soltis ranked it one of the four best games of the entire twentieth century.
3. Alekhine vs. Saemisch — Berlin, 1923 (Exhibition)
This short exhibition game against Friedrich Saemisch is a textbook example of Alekhine’s tactical economy: twenty moves, no wasted time, a queen sacrifice, and a forced mate. Saemisch was himself a strong attacking player and one of the leading young masters in Germany at the time — he was no pushover.
In a Sicilian Defense, Alekhine builds pressure methodically before sacrificing his queen with 18.fxe6 and following up with 19.exf7+. The resulting position is completely won for White: the f7 pawn threatens to promote, and after 20.Nd5 Black is facing a knight fork that cannot be adequately answered. Saemisch resigned rather than face further material loss. The game earned its nickname “Shots in the Dark” for the sudden way the position explodes from an apparently quiet middlegame.
4. Réti vs. Alekhine — Baden-Baden, 1925
When American grandmaster Frank Marshall asked Alekhine in 1927 which game he considered his personal best, Alekhine chose this one without hesitation. That’s remarkable given the competition.
Richard Réti was one of the founders of the hypermodern school — a movement that argued you didn’t need to occupy the center with pawns, only attack it from a distance. He opens with 1.g3, a quiet fianchetto setup, and obtains a strategically sound position. But Alekhine’s response is a masterclass in calculated complexity: he allows Réti to build his structure, then dismantles it with a sequence of knight maneuvers and rook sacrifices so deep that annotators still debate some of the variations today. The endgame, where Alekhine’s knight dominates Réti’s bishop pair, is a study in piece coordination.
5. Capablanca vs. Alekhine — World Championship, 1927, Game 11
The 1927 World Championship match between Alekhine and José Raúl Capablanca is one of the most dramatic events in chess history. Capablanca was considered effectively invincible going in — he had gone years without losing a tournament game — and almost no one believed Alekhine could win six games against him. (Alekhine had never defeated Capablanca before the match.)
Game 11 was the turning point that made the chess world take notice. After a tense Queen’s Gambit middlegame, Alekhine obtains connected passed pawns and engineers an endgame of extraordinary complexity. The finish is spectacular: both sides promote pawns to queens in a sequence that seemed impossible to calculate at the board, and Alekhine navigates it all with complete precision. When Capablanca resigned after 66 moves, Alekhine had established a lead in the match that Capablanca would never fully overcome.
6. Alekhine vs. Capablanca — World Championship, 1927, Game 34
The final game of the match. Going into game 34, Alekhine led 5 wins to 3, with 25 draws. He needed one more win to claim the championship outright. He didn’t settle for a draw — he played to win, and he won.
Another Queen’s Gambit (nearly the entire 34-game match was contested in that opening), this time Alekhine plays the precise 6.a3, shutting down Capablanca’s usual defensive setup. He wins a pawn in the middlegame and then converts it in an 82-move rook endgame of exemplary technique — the kind of technical conversion that Capablanca was supposed to be the world expert in. The match had turned the chess world upside down, and this game was the final act. When Capablanca resigned, Alekhine had become world champion for the first time.
7. Alekhine vs. Spielmann — New York, 1927
New York 1927 was one of the strongest tournaments of the decade, bringing together Capablanca, Nimzowitsch, Vidmar, Marshall, and most of the other top players of the era. Alekhine won it, and this game against Rudolf Spielmann — himself a renowned attacking player and the author of a celebrated book on the art of sacrifice — is one of the finer technical wins from the event.
From a French Defense, the queens come off early and the game transitions into an endgame while still in the opening phase. What follows is a 69-move demonstration of king and rook technique: Alekhine advances his king, creates a passed pawn on the queenside, and maneuvers with the kind of precision that would characterize his best endgame play throughout the 1927 match against Capablanca just a few months later. Spielmann was not the type to collapse easily — he resisted accurately for many moves — but Alekhine converted without error.
How to Study These Games
The best starting point for anyone who wants to go deeper is Alekhine’s own two-volume annotation collection. The first volume covers 1908–1923, and the second covers 1924–1937. Both are still in print and widely available. His annotations are classics of chess literature in their own right — he explains not just the moves but the reasoning, the psychology, and the moments of doubt.
When working through these games, a few things are worth paying attention to. First, notice how rarely Alekhine’s wins depend on a single spectacular move. Even the games with brilliant combinations — the Bogoljubov game, the Réti game — were set up over many moves of precise positional preparation. Second, look at the endgames. Alekhine was far stronger in endings than his reputation as an attacking player suggests. Games 6 and 7 above are both endgame masterpieces, and the Capablanca match as a whole is the clearest evidence of his technical depth.
Finally, if you’re newer to reading chess notation, the chess notation guide on this site can help you get oriented. Once you can follow the moves in the boards above, Alekhine’s games reward careful study in a way that almost no other player’s games do — there is always something new to find.