St. Petersburg All-Russian tournament, Round 1: Flamberg, Alapin, Levitsky, Levenfish, Evtifeev score; Alekhine falls to Lowtzky

We can now report that the opening round of the All-Russian Masters' tournament at St. Petersburg featured six decisive games, among them a victory by Moishe Lowtzky over Alexander Alekhine, one of the tourney favorites. Other winners on the day were Alexander Flamberg, Stepan Levitsky, Semyon Alapin, Grigory Levenfish, and Peter Evtifeev.  One prominent name missing from the list of competitors is that of Fyodor Dus-Chotimirsky, who, we are informed. elected not to participate and whose place was been assigned to Andrey Smorodsky; the first-round game between Smorodsky and Aron Niemzowitsch was postponed, and will be made up in a few day's time.

The full list of results from the opening round is as follows:

Alexander Alekhine   0-1   Moishe Lowtzky

Moisei Eljaschoff     0-1   Semyon Alapin

Alexander Flamberg  1-0   Efim Bogoljubow

Jean Taubenhaus    ½-½    Eugene Znosko-Borovsky

Georg Salwe    ½-½   Alexander Evensohn 

Stepan Levitsky   1-0   Sergey Lebedev

Peter Evtifeev   1-0   Bernhard Gregory

Grigory Levenfish   1-0   Sergey v. Freymann

Andrey Smorodsky postponed vs. Aron Niemzowitsch

We have five games to share with our readers, beginning with the loss by Alekhine to Lowtzky, in which White recovered from an inferior position only to later go wrong in the search for a win.

Flamberg scored a quick victory over Bogoljubow when the latter erred with 11...Nd4, overlooking the winning 12.b4!

Evtifeev developed a strong King-side attack to best Gregory.

Levenfish won a pawn at the 14th move and displayed fine technique in the realization of his advantage.

Finally, Taubenhaus with 23.Qxc7 initiated a sequence through which he exchanged both Rooks for the Queen and pawn of Znosko-Borovsky; a draw was agreed at the 30th move in a position that to our eye still offered scope for further play.