A Bonus World Chess Column: Remembering the 1954 Botvinnik-Smyslov World Championship Match
Sunday, January 8, 2017 at 7:06PM
Dennis Monokroussos in AGON, Mikhail Botvinnik, Vassily Smyslov

The Carlsen-Karjakin match had its share of draws (10 of 12, before the tiebreaks), and other world championship matches have been drawfests as well. This could not be said of the 1954 title tilt between defending champion Mikhail Botvinnik and his challenger, Vassily Smyslov. There were 14 decisive games in the match, and at one stage there were eight consecutive games without a single draw.

In a bonus column this week, I annotate nine games from the match, so here's your chance to delve deeply into one of the most interesting matches in chess history - a somewhat underappreciated match at that, probably on account of its finishing in a draw and because they played again in 1957 and 1958. But have a look, and you'll see that it was a very rich match, with both sides winning interesting and beautiful games.

Article originally appeared on The Chess Mind (http://www.thechessmind.net/).
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