Max Euwe
| Max Euwe | |
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Max Euwe in 1963
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| Full name | Machgielis Euwe |
| Country | Netherlands |
| Born |
May 20, 1901 Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Died | November 26, 1981 (aged 80) Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Title | Grandmaster (1950) |
| World Champion | 1935–37 |
| Peak rating | 2530 (May 1974) |
Machgielis "Max" Euwe, PhD (Dutch: [ˈøːwə]; May 20, 1901 – November 26, 1981) was a Dutch chess Grandmaster, mathematician, author, and chess administrator. He was the fifth player to become World Chess Champion (1935–37). Euwe served as President of FIDE, the World Chess Federation, from 1970 to 1978.
Euwe was born in Watergraafsmeer, near Amsterdam. He studied mathematics at the University of Amsterdam, earning his doctorate in 1926, and taught mathematics, first in Rotterdam, and later at a girls' Lyceum in Amsterdam. He published a mathematical analysis of the game of chess from an intuitionistic point of view, in which he showed, using the Thue–Morse sequence, that the then-official rules did not exclude the possibility of infinite games.
Euwe played his first tournament at age 10, winning every game. Euwe won every Dutch chess championship that he contested from 1921 until 1952, and additionally won the title in 1955 – his 12 titles are still a record. The only other winners during this period were Salo Landau in 1936, when Euwe, then world champion, did not compete, and Jan Hein Donner in 1954. He became the world amateur chess champion in 1928, at The Hague, with a score of 12/15.
Euwe married in 1926, started a family soon afterwards, and could only play competitive chess during school vacations, so his opportunities for international chess competition at the top level were limited. But he performed well in the few tournaments and matches for which he could find time from the early 1920s to the mid-1930s. He lost a training match to Alexander Alekhine held in the Netherlands in 1926 (alternatively 1926‒27), with 4½/10 (+3 -2 =5). The match was played to help Euwe to prepare for a future encounter with José Raúl Capablanca, then world champion. Euwe lost both the first and second FIDE Championship matches to Efim Bogoljubov, held in the Netherlands in 1928 and 1928‒29 respectively, scoring 4½/10 in each match ((+2 -3 =5) in the first match, (+1 -2 =7) in the second match). He lost a match to Capablanca held in Amsterdam in 1931 with 4/10 (+0 -2 =8). Euwe won a match against Spielmann held in Amsterdam in 1932 3 – 1. The match was played to help Euwe prepare for his upcoming match with Flohr. He drew the match with Flohr, which was held in Amsterdam and Karlsbad in the spring and autumn of 1932, with 8/16.
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