Editing Alexander Alekhine (section)

===Playing strength and style===
{{Main|Comparison of top chess players throughout history}}

Alekhine's peak period was in the early 1930s, when he won almost every tournament he played, sometimes by huge margins. Afterward, his play declined, and he never won a top-class tournament after 1934. After Alekhine regained his world title in 1937, there were several new contenders, all of whom would have been serious challengers.<ref name="Fine1952WorldsGreatChessGames"/>

{{Chess diagram small
 |tright
 |[[Richard Réti|Réti]] vs. Alekhine, <br />Baden-Baden 1925
 |rd|  |  |  |  |  |kd|  
 |  |nl|  |  |  |pd|pd|  
 |  |  |  |  |  |nd|  |  
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |bd|  
 |  |  |  |  |rd|nl|pl|  
 |  |  |  |rl|nd|pl|  |kl
 |  |  |rl|  |  |  |  |bl
 |One of Alekhine's most famous and complicated wins. 31...Ne4 forces the win of White's knight at b7 in twelve moves.<ref name="Fine1952WorldsGreatChessGames"/>
|reverse=true
}}

Alekhine was one of the greatest attacking players and could apparently produce [[Combination (chess)|combinations]] at will. What set him apart from most other attacking players was his ability to see the potential for an attack and prepare for it in positions where others saw nothing. [[Rudolf Spielmann]], a master tactician who produced many brilliancies, said, "I can see the combinations as well as Alekhine, but I cannot get to the same positions."<ref name="Fine1952WorldsGreatChessGames"/> Dr. Max Euwe said, "Alekhine is a poet who creates a work of art out of something that would hardly inspire another man to send home a picture post-card."<ref name="focusdepEuwe">{{cite web |url=http://www.focusdep.com/quotes/authors/Max/Euwe |title=Max Euwe quotes, biographies & pictures |access-date=2008-05-23 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080105104501/http://www.focusdep.com/quotes/authors/Max/Euwe |archive-date=2008-01-05 }}</ref> An explanation offered by Réti was, "he beats his opponents by analysing simple and apparently harmless sequences of moves in order to see whether at some time or another at the end of it an original possibility, and therefore one difficult to see, might be hidden."<ref>Réti 1923, p.129</ref> [[John Nunn]] commented that "Alekhine had a special ability to provoke complications
without taking excessive risks",<ref name="lifemasterajRetiAlekhine1925">{{cite web |url=http://www.lifemasteraj.com/old_af-dl/bg_reti-alek1g0.html |title=Reti - Alekhine, Baden-Baden 1925 |author=Goldsby, A.J. |year=2007 |access-date=2008-05-23 |archive-date=2011-07-27 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727134703/http://www.lifemasteraj.com/old_af-dl/bg_reti-alek1g0.html |url-status=live }}</ref> and [[Edward Winter (chess historian)|Edward Winter]] called him "the supreme genius of the complicated position".<ref name="compulsivereaderReview107GreatChessBattles"/>

Nevertheless, [[Garry Kasparov]] said that Alekhine's attacking play was based on solid positional foundations,<ref name="chessbaseAljechinVsKasparov">{{cite web |url=http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1283 |title=Alexander Aljechin vs. Garry Kasparov |author=Müller, K. |date=2003-11-15 |access-date=2008-05-23 |archive-date=2009-02-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090207005548/http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1283 |url-status=live }}</ref> and [[Harry Golombek]] went further, saying that "Alekhine was the most versatile of all chess geniuses, being equally at home in every style of play and in all phases of the game."<ref name="GolombekGameOfChess"/> [[Reuben Fine]], a serious contender for the world championship in the late 1930s, wrote in the 1950s that Alekhine's collection of best games was one of the three most beautiful that he knew,<ref name="Fine1952WorldsGreatChessGames"/> and Golombek was equally impressed.<ref name="GolombekGameOfChess">Golombek 1955</ref>

Alekhine's games have a higher percentage of wins than those of any other World Champion, and his drawn games are on average among the longest of all champions'.<ref name="Fischer2004ChampionsDraws">{{cite web |url=http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=2096 |title=World Champions and Draws |author=Fischer, J. |date=2004-12-23 |access-date=2008-05-23 |archive-date=2011-06-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110629204957/http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=2096 |url-status=live }}</ref> His desire to win extended beyond formal chess competition. When Fine beat him in some casual games in 1933, Alekhine demanded a match for a small stake. And in [[table tennis]], which Alekhine played enthusiastically but badly, he would often crush the ball when he lost.<ref name="Fine1952WorldsGreatChessGames" />

[[Bobby Fischer]], in a 1964 article, ranked Alekhine as one of the ten greatest players in history.<ref name="Fischer_p56-61">{{cite news |title=The Ten Greatest Masters in History |author=Fischer, B. |work=Chessworld |date=January–February 1964 |pages=56–61 |url=http://chess.eusa.ed.ac.uk/Chess/Trivia/Fishers10.html |access-date=2009-01-01 |author-link=Bobby Fischer |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090206215606/http://chess.eusa.ed.ac.uk/Chess/Trivia/Fishers10.html |archive-date=6 February 2009 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Fischer, who was famous for the clarity of his play,<!-- I neutralise this reference because I do not think it is really necessary<ref>{{cite book |title=How to Beat Bobby Fischer |author=[[Edmar Mednis|Mednis, E.]] |year=1997 |publisher=Dover Publications |pages=xxv-xxvii |isbn=0-486-29844-2 |no-pp=true}}</ref> --> wrote of Alekhine: <blockquote>Alekhine has never been a hero of mine, and I've never cared for his style of play. There's nothing light or breezy about it; it worked for him, but it could scarcely work for anyone else. He played gigantic conceptions, full of outrageous and unprecedented ideas.&nbsp;... [H]e had great imagination; he could see more deeply into a situation than any other player in chess history.&nbsp;... It was in the most complicated positions that Alekhine found his grandest concepts.<ref name="Fischer_p56-61"/></blockquote>

Alekhine's style had a profound influence on Kasparov, who said: "Alexander Alekhine is the first luminary among the others who are still having the greatest influence on me. I like his universality, his approach to the game, his chess ideas. I am sure that the future belongs to Alekhine chess."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1005464 |title=Garry Kasparov's Best Games |access-date=2008-05-24 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080602071351/http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1005464 |archive-date=2 June 2008  |url-status=live}}</ref> In 2012, [[Levon Aronian]] said that he considers Alekhine the greatest chess player of all time.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.whychess.com/en/node/2836 |title=Aronian names Alekhine best player of all time |publisher=WhyChess |access-date=2012-09-15 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121119113805/http://whychess.com/en/node/2836 |archive-date=2012-11-19 |url-status=dead }}</ref>