Alexander Alekhine

I think it's just not practical for people to play.

Or if you have someone at the club that plays, like, the Scandinavian or the Alekhine, like, go through that.

And then you still have-- So let's say you could just plaster the quick starters, and then you use the main course as reference.

You know, you have a blitz game, it's not in the quick starter, you go look it up, you know?

I was one of the pioneers of YouTube.

Terrible microphone, they say, but passionate analysis, you know? I was just going through master games, like Alekhine games, just telling people about what I'm seeing.

So pure passion and study of the master games in depth.

Also playing on ICC.

I didn't even have an Elo point to talk about, right? So it was really driven by pure passion for the game itself, the beauty of the game itself.

I was really fascinated by...

I will read between Alekhine and Cabablanque, curious about reading how Botvinnik did against Smithlow or the matches against Tal, you know, rematches.

So it's a full absorption, I would say, from reading and getting fascinated by the game itself rather than I will do this to get better at chess or tomorrow, you know, my tournament is coming.

In fact...

Yeah, it could even be a dual biography, but it would be much better, of course, if two different people take up those herculean tasks to write about Euwe and about Alekhine.

Yeah, that's easily enough material

for two books.

Not just because of his results, but also because of his writings, as you mentioned in your introduction.

The image that people now have of Donner is very, very largely based on his writings.

So in a very, very different way from Alekhine, Donner created a sort of myth about himself.

Let's say he didn't take himself seriously, but he wrote about himself in so many different aspects that people nowadays probably only remember his feud with Prince, some of his most well-known stories.

Including the world champion, right?

Yeah, Alexander Alekhine.

He gets them to literally think out loud while they are playing a game.

And what DeGroote found by listening to them was, well, it was the first major shock in this field.