A Century of Chess: Bad Kissingen 1928
As a reminder, the book of this series, A Century of Chess: Book One: 1900-1909 is available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback. I'm picking up the series in 1928.
Bad Kissingen was meant to be the start of Capablanca’s rehabilitation tour after his loss of the world championship in 1927. It’s a sort of chess tradition that the loser of a world championship match wins the first tournament they play in afterwards, and Capablanca mostly did his part, putting in a score of +3 and the kind of trim professional performance for which he was so famous.
But Efim Bogoljubow spoiled Capablanca’s moment, beating him by a full point. This might have had lasting consequences in chess history, helping to give Alekhine an excuse to award the next championship match to Bogoljubow instead of a widely-anticipated rematch with Capablanca.
Bogoljubow can't be given too much credit for the victory. He really was astonishingly, almost unprecedentedly lucky. Playing against him, both Marshall and Spielmann blundered pieces. Réti fell apart when up two minor pieces and a pawn for a rook. Tarrasch badly overextended himself. But, as everybody knows, there is no luck in chess, and Bogoljubow's energetic style put the maximum pressure on his opponents, causing players to unexpectedly crack.
Just as at Moscow 1925, Capablanca found himself in the peculiar position of winning his individual game against Bogoljubow but finishing behind him in the tournament standings.
In the case of Bad Kissingen, he could blame not only Bogoljubow's luck but also Rudolf Spielmann, who put in something like the platonic spoiler performance, having a miserable tournament and winning only one game, but scoring that win against Capablanca.
Capablanca also had the distinction of bringing Aron Nimzowitsch's always-precarious sanity to the breaking point. Nimzowitsch won an exchange and was on the verge of scoring his first win against Capablanca when Capablanca secured a miracle draw. "Nimzowitsch was the most unhappy man of the tournament," wrote Jens Enevoldsen. "He was like a sick hen. He snapped at his best friends and was ever crazier than usual."
Bad Kissingen was an important step forward for Max Euwe. He had somewhat underperformed throughout the 1920s, but the newly-formed FIDE unexpectedly put him in the conversation for the world championship with a pair of matches against Bogoljubow — and Euwe did much to secure that reputation by finishing third here with Akiba Rubinstein.
Sources: The tournament is discussed from Nimzowitsch's perspective in Rudolf Reinhardt's Aron Nimzowitsch.
