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Capablanca v Alekhine, 1927 Edward Winter (2003)
Signatures on the London Rules (1922)
This feature article focuses on the conditions for the 1927 world title match, and particularly on whether they contained a 5-5 clause.
Several times in Garry Kasparov on My Great Predecessors Part I it is stated that if a 5-5 score had been reached in the 1927 world championship match between Capablanca and Alekhine the contest would have been drawn. Scepticism about this has been expressed, and Kasparov has acknowledged (in his interview with Hanon Russell at the Chess Café) that the claim may be unfounded. Here we provide an overview of the issue.
The Buenos Aires match was the only one played under the London Rules, which had been agreed upon on 9 August 1922 by Capablanca, Alekhine, Bogoljubow, Maróczy, Réti, Rubinstein, Tartakower and Vidmar. They were published on pages 133-134 of the November 1926 American Chess Bulletin and pages 125-126 of the January 1927 Chess Amateur . We believe that the first book to reproduce the full text was our 1989 volume on Capablanca. Clause one of the London Rules stated: ‘The match to be one of six games up, drawn games not to count.’ That plain wording, coupled with the absence of any reference to a 5-5 condition elsewhere in the Rules, might suggest a quick end to the matter, but there are complications. We first discussed a possible 5-5 condition 18 years ago (C.N. 880), when the late Božidar Kažić of Belgrade informed us that during the 1978 Karpov-Korchnoi match in Baguio Max Euwe had told him regarding the 1927 event: ‘It is not true about 5-5; it is the imagination of journalists.’ The previous year (i.e. 1984 – C.N. 728) we had quoted a letter written by Capablanca to Julius Finn from Buenos Aires on 15 October 1927 which concluded: ‘Should the match here end in a draw, I suggest that the next match be limited to 20 games, the w