Chess to end the German-speaking dominance in chess; he was undefeated in tournament play for eight years, until 1924. His successor was Russian-French Alexander Alekhine, a strong attacking player who died as the world champion in 1946. He briefly lost the title to Dutch player Max Euwe in 1935 and regained it two years later. Between the world wars, chess was revolutionized by the new theoretical school of so-called hypermodernists like Aron Nimzowitsch and Richard Réti. They advocated controlling the of the board with distant pieces rather than with pawns, thus inviting opponents to occupy the center with pawns, which become
Courier chess the standard chessboard in place of the old alfil and gave the queen the combined powers of the courier and the rook. This game was so much more exciting than medieval chess that it soon drove the older game off the market. Other improvements were tried out. One was an optional double first step for the pawns. This was at first restricted to the king's, queen's, and rooks' pawns, and then gradually extended to the others. In the early sixteenth century Lucas van Leyden, in the Netherlands, painted a picture called "The Chess Players" in which a woman appears to