The Botvinnik - Smyslov Rivalry (III)

In The Botvinnik - Smyslov Rivalry (II), I counted 100 tournament and match games plus six training games on Chessgames.com. Two of the six training games are the same as those marked 'training' on the GMchess.com collection of Smyslov games. The other four can be found on Secret Matches (PDF; Chesscafe.com).

The cover page on the Chesscafe PDF file says, 'Secret Matches: The Unknown Training Games of Mikhail Botvinnik'; Selected Games Annotated and Theoretical Section by Jan Timman; Edited by Hanon W. Russell'. There is also a Google conversion to HTML.

That makes an even 100 official games played between Botvinnik and Smyslov. I exclude the training games because I'm not sure about the conditions under which they were played. For example, they might have been games where the opening was agreed in advance.

Chessgames.com says, 'Overall record: Mikhail Botvinnik beat Vasily Smyslov 29 to 24, with 53 draws' (+29-24=53). Excluding the six training games (+3-2=1), the record in official games was +26-23=52. This was the second greatest rivalry after Kasparov - Karpov.