Candidates chess: A champ's death, Cold War drama and roulette rising

How a world champion's death led to the birth of Candidates ..

Just before he died, Alekhine is understood to have agreed to play Mikhail Botvinnik in the next World Championship match with the Moscow Chess Club promising $10,000 to organise it..

At the height of the Cold War, eight of the worlds best chess players landed on the tiny Caribbean Island of Curacao for a Candidates tournament that ran for two months..

In his book on the match Curacao 1962 The Battle of Chess Minds that Shook the Chess World, Jan Timman wrote of Fischer and compatriot Pal Benko coming to blows over the services of a second and Fischer lodging an official protest with the tournament committee suggesting that Benko be fined/expelled from the event. ..

Fischer he eventually played a World Championship a decade after Curacao alleged that the top three Soviet players in the tournament, Tigran Petrosian, Paul Keres and Efim Geller, worked out short, pre-arranged draws amongst themselves so that they could focus their energies on him..

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