Moscow 1925

Moscow 1925 ran from November 10 to December 8 and was the first major international tournament organized in the Soviet Union. Its 21-player field contained 11 foreign and 10 Soviet competitors. They played a single round robin, meaning that every player met every other player once, for a total of 210 games.

Efim Bogoljubow won with 15.5 points from 20 games, finishing ahead of Emanuel Lasker and José Raúl Capablanca. A win scores one point and a draw half a point, so the total combines all of a player's wins, draws, and losses. The result drew particular attention because Lasker and Capablanca were among the era's most celebrated players.

The tournament was also a state-supported cultural event. It formed part of an effort to make chess a mass activity rather than a pursuit limited to a small specialist circle. Its atmosphere reached popular cinema through the silent comedy Chess Fever, in which Capablanca appeared.

Despite its location and large Soviet contingent, this was not a national championship. Its identity depended on the invited international field. It can be compared with New York 1924 as another great tournament of the decade, but Moscow had a distinct political and cultural setting.