Euwe v Alekhine, 1935, game 26: the Pearl of Zandvoort

Max Euwe played this game against the world champion, Alexander Alekhine, in Zandvoort on 3 December 1935, as game 26 of their world championship match. The match was played in thirteen Dutch towns, and Euwe went into this game a point ahead with five games to go. His win practically decided the match, which he won 15½–14½ to become world champion. Savielly Tartakower called it "the Pearl of Zandvoort".

White to move after 20...Bf6. Euwe's next move gives up a knight for three pawns.

The whole game

Euwe v Alekhine, World Championship 1935, game 26. Step through all 47 moves; Black resigned.

The opening is a Dutch Defence. The game was adjourned after 40...Rd2 and finished the next session.

What Stockfish makes of it

We had Stockfish check every move. The sacrifice is sound, and the result was decided by mistakes in the endgame, on both sides.

Early chances

Garry Kasparov called 9.Qc2 a timid move that missed the chance offered by 8...b6. Stockfish agrees that 8...b6 was inaccurate, and that 9.Nxe4 was a little stronger than 9.Qc2.

21.Nxf5: a knight for three pawns

21.Nxf5 Bxc3 22.Nxd6 Qb8 23.Nxe4: White has three pawns for the piece.

Raymond Keene called 21.Nxf5 a bold sacrifice, and said anything else would let Alekhine equalise; Euwe himself called it a sound combination. Stockfish agrees it was sound: it rates the position about level after it, and 22.Nxd6 was the only good follow-up. 30.Rg1, another sacrifice, also keeps the balance by Stockfish's measure rather than winning.

36.Qe5: a win missed

White to move after 35...Rf8. 36.b3 would have kept a winning advantage.

Alekhine spent more than 45 minutes on 34...Re7. Two moves later, Euwe exchanged queens with 36.Qe5, and Stockfish rates that a missed chance: 36.b3 would have left White about two pawns better, against about a third of a pawn after the exchange.

37...Rf5 to 38...h6: the endgame turns

37.fxe5 Rf5 38.Re1 h6 39.Nd8: White's knight heads for the queenside, and the e-pawn advances.

In the endgame both players went wrong. After 37.fxe5, giving up the exchange with 37...Rxe6 would have kept the game about level; after 37...Rf5 White was better again. Euwe answered with 38.Re1, where 38.Rg5 was stronger. Then Alekhine's 38...h6 was the decisive mistake: 38...Rxe6 would still have held the balance, and after 38...h6 Stockfish rates White three and a half pawns better. White's e-pawn reached e7, and Alekhine resigned after 47.Ne4+.

How we checked

The moves are from the game record on ChessBase, chessentials.com and Raymond Keene's column in The Spectator (1 May 1993), which agree. We replayed every move with python-chess: all are legal.
The engine: Stockfish 16.1 checked every move at depth 22, and the key moments again at depth 26. "A pawn better" is Stockfish's measure of the position, not a count of material.
The history and the named opinions (Tartakower, Kasparov, Keene, Euwe) are from ChessBase, chessentials.com and The Spectator; the match result from Wikipedia's page on the 1935 World Championship.

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