[2] Of the twelve Soviets, only four, Grigory Levenfish, Peter Romanovsky, Ilya Rabinovich and Fedir Bohatyrchuk had played at the 1925 event.
[2] Salo Flohr (Czechoslovakia) was internationally renowned and considered a world championship contender.
[3] Mikhail Botvinnik (Soviet Union) was known as a rising star at age 24 and two years earlier had drawn a match with Flohr.
[4] Emanuel Lasker (Germany) and José Raúl Capablanca (Cuba) were former world champions.
[2] Reuben Fine hailed Lasker's result at age 66 as "a biological miracle.