The only other winners during this period were Salo Landau in 1936, when Euwe, then world champion, did not compete; and Jan Hein Donner in 1954.

[7] The match was played to help Euwe prepare for a future encounter with José Raúl Capablanca, then world champion.

Earlier that year, Dutch radio sports journalist Han Hollander asked Capablanca for his views on the forthcoming match.

Then Euwe gives his assessment in Dutch, explaining that his feelings alternated from optimism to pessimism, but in the previous ten years, their score had been evenly matched at 7–7.

[15][16] On December 15, 1935, after 30 games played in 13 different cities around the Netherlands over a period of 80 days, Euwe defeated Alekhine by 15½–14½, becoming the fifth World Chess Champion.

The match was a real contest initially, but Euwe's play collapsed near the end, and he lost four of the last five games.

After Alekhine's death in 1946, Euwe was considered by some to have a moral right to the position of world champion, based at least partially on his clear second-place finish in the great tournament at Groningen in 1946, behind Mikhail Botvinnik.

But Euwe consented to participate in a five-player tournament to select the new champion, the World Chess Championship 1948.

In 1957, Euwe played a short match against 14-year-old future world champion Bobby Fischer, winning one game and drawing the other.

On several occasions this brought him into conflict with the USSR Chess Federation, which thought it had the right to dominate matters because it contributed a very large share of FIDE's budget and Soviet players dominated the world rankings – in effect, they treated chess as an extension of the Cold War.

According to Sosonko, in 1973, he accepted the Soviets' demand that Bent Larsen and Robert Hübner, the two strongest non-Soviet contenders (Fischer was now champion), should play in the Leningrad Interzonal tournament rather than the weaker one in Petrópolis.

Larsen and Hübner were eliminated from the competition for the World Championship because Korchnoi and Karpov took the first two places at Leningrad.

[26] Despite the turbulence of the period, most assessments of Euwe's performance as president of FIDE are sympathetic:[19] He died in 1981, age 80, of a heart attack.

Revered around the chess world for his many contributions, he had travelled extensively while FIDE President, bringing many new members into the organization.

Euwe was noted for his logical approach and for his knowledge of openings, in which he made major contributions to chess theory.

In his Russian articles he often described Euwe as lacking in originality and in the mental toughness required of a world champion.

[6][14] Former Soviet grandmaster Sosonko used Euwe and den Hertog's 1927 Practische Schaaklessen as a textbook when teaching in the Leningrad House of Pioneers, and considers it "one of the best chess books ever".

[27] Euwe's book From My Games, 1920–1937 was originally published in 1939 by Harcourt, Brace and Company, and was republished by Dover in 1975 (ISBN 0-486-23111-9).

The year he won the world championship Chess he wrote a book named: (Dutch) Oom Jan leert zijn neefje schaken.