Bobby Fischer and his Predecessors in the World Chess Championship
Max Euwe was born on May 20, 1901 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He has long been regarded as almost an accidental world champion due to the probably not true rumor that Alekhine was drunk when he lost the world title to Euwe in 1935. This has resulted in a controversy that is still being debated today: Was Euwe really the strongest player in the world when he won the world championship in 1935? Regardless of that issue, Euwe was certainly the most active and prolific writer about the game. He was never a professional player. He had a real job. He was a math professor. After retirement he became a chess official. He was president of FIDE, the World Chess Federation, from 1970 to 1978. This was during the Cold War and Euwe had to make many difficult decisions for the good of chess. It was absolutely, definitely because of Euwe that Bobby Fischer got to sit down at the board to play a match for the World Chess Championship. Fischer had been disqualified many times along the way, the first time being when he refused to play in the US Championship that was a necessary preliminary to the World Chess Championship competition. Thus, Euwe had to walk the thin tightrope between getting Fischer to play while not causing the Spassky and the Soviets to refuse to compete because of favoritism shown to Fischer. Euwe died on November 26, 1981 in his native Amsterdam at age 80.