Chess history can be unkind to top players whose standard suddenly drops. One whose reputation has suffered is Salo Flohr, the world No2 behind Alexander Alekhine in the early 1930s.
In his peak years, Flohr tied matches with the future champions Max Euwe and Mikhail Botvinnik, won Olympiad gold, and was named by Fide in 1937 as Alekhine’s official challenger. Alekhine agreed, and a 30-game series was planned in Czech cities financed by the Bata shoe company. Then came Munich 1938 . . .
At the Avro super-tournament, Flohr finished last. He and his wife fled to Russia, helped by his friend Mikhail Botvinnik. There he became a successful chess journalist, but his playing career stalled as young Soviet grandmasters “sprang up like mushrooms”, and he took the easy way out with quick agreed draws.
His start in life had been difficult. One of eight children from a poor family, his parents were killed in a massacre and he and his brother had to flee to Prague, where his first job was to sell pickled cabbage. That was followed by a newspaper round where he watched cafe customers playing chess, got interested, showed amazing talent, and was soon able to live from playing blitz games for stakes and giving simultaneous displays.
In his vintage years, Flohr’s great skill was in spotting strategic essentials in simple positions. The first game of his that I ever played over made a big impression. With the queens exchanged early, Flohr systematically exploited his active black bishop against its passive white counterpart to exchange down into a won pawn ending.
Three decades later, I made the same type of error against Flohr at Hastings. My 12…Nxb3? (correct was Nfd7) enabled him to simply and systematically weaken, attack and capture Black’s a5 pawn, after which the outcome was slow but sure.
Would Flohr have won the world title from Alekhine? It seems unlikely, because he had done badly in their individual meetings and could not match the No1’s imaginative attacks. But with a home audience to inspire the challenger, who knows?
Puzzle 2556
Kristina Brankov v Maria Manakova, Serbian League 2023. Black to move and win.
Click here for solution
