Alekhine Reclaims the Crown

Two years after losing his title to Max Euwe, Alexander Alekhine won it back in the very last game of their 1937 rematch, played at The Hague. Alekhine played Black in this game and beat Euwe, sealing a match score of 15.5 to 9.5 and becoming the first player in history to regain the World Championship after losing it.

The game itself is a long positional grind rather than a single flashy combination: Alekhine gradually outplays Euwe from a Nimzo-Indian structure, wins a pawn in the middlegame, and converts patiently over more than forty moves until White's position finally collapses.

Popular chess writing often frames the 1937 comeback as a redemption story tied to the disputed drinking narrative around Alekhine's 1935 loss, but that causal claim about his personal conduct is contested rather than established, and no conduct-based explanation is asserted here; the 1937 result stands on its own merits as recorded on the board.