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Both Nimzowitsch in his monumental work My System, as well as Alekhine in his book My Best Games 1924-1937, believed that White was lost the whole time from our starting position to the end of the game (Nimzowitsch did not explicitly state this, but this conclusion follows from his comments). And, indeed, the following position is lost for White. However, the problem remains: did Black maintain his winning advantage until the end of the game, or were there pitfalls (for Black) and opportunities (for White) on the way? Let us see!
In my opinion, the first critical moment in the game, not mentioned by annotators until now, is the move 35…Rxc4? This natural move throws away the win. Instead, re-capturing with the pawn 35…bxc4 changes the pawn structure, and it should be enough of an advantage for Black to force a win (albeit a gradual one). We should mention that our analysis of this 35…bxc4 line draws on analysis by Charles Sullivan (USA).
The second critical moment in the game is the move 37.Rfb1? This move is a mistake and White is losing once more. Better was 37.g4!, after which White organizes counterplay on the kingside, which should be enough for salvation.
But after Black’s mistake on move 42, Thomas immediately makes a mistake of his own with 43.Rba1? and White is lost. After the better 43.Bc1!, White should hold.
The fifth important moment in the game is the move 44...R6a5? – a mistake after which White can once more save the game. Better was 44...f6 after which Black should win with correct play.
Instead of the move 45…a6, interesting (and slightly preferable) is 45…f6. However, with proper play, White should still survive.
The sixth and last critical moment in this game is the move 48.Bc1? The move is a mistake that loses the game. Black responds with 48…e5 and, as Nimzowitsch comments, this is: "The breakthrough which sets the seal on White’s downfall." However, after the best 48.Kc2!! the position is even. We should mention, this move was also found by GM Alex Fischbein (an avid lover of the book My System) and published in a recent issue of American Chess Magazine.
Of course, as previous commentators have made mistakes and oversights, I do not expect my comments to be ideal either. Chess is a game in which mistakes are an integral part. You could go so far as to say that if mistakes did not exist, it would mean the death of chess. That is why I expect that in the future, someone will take a critical look at this analysis and find further new ideas.
Two sets of comments have been provided for the same game. The first version of the commentary contains only the conclusions - it is for readers who do not want to go deeper into the analysis, but just wish to see an overview of the key ideas. The second version gives far more analysis, and it is for people who have more time and are interested in how I came to the above conclusions.
In any case, the idea of this analysis is to improve the understanding of chess, because as Mark Dvoretzky, perhaps the greatest coach of all time, once wrote: "Defensive possibilities in chess are inexhaustible." This is one of those attempts to show that Dvoretzky was right: the defensive possibilities were indeed there in this game, but it has taken 100 years to find them!
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