[blind-chess] Annotated Game #110: Max Euwe - Emanuel Lasker, Zurich 1934
- From: "Roderick Macdonald" <rjmacdonald@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Blind-Chess Mailing List" <blind-chess@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2012 22:20:26 -1000
Annotated Game #110:
Max Euwe - Emanuel Lasker, Zurich 1934
Adapted and Condensed from
Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
Contents:
++1. Machgielis (Max) Euwe
++1.A Early years
++1.B Early career
++1.C World Champion
++1.D Later career
++1.E FIDE President
++1.F Assessment of Euwe's chess
++1.G Chess books by Euwe
++1/H Other interesting accounts
++1.I Notable chess games
++1.J Quotations
++2. Emanuel Lasker
++2.A Life and career
++2.A1 Early years 1868-1894
++2.A2 Chess competition 1894-1918
++2.A2a Match against Steinitz
++2.A2b Successes in tournaments
++2.A2c Matches against Marshall and Tarrasch
++2.A2d Matches against Janowski
++2.A2e Match against Schlechter
++2.A2f Abortive challenges
++2.A3 Academic activities 1894-1918
++2.A4 Other activities 1894-1918
++2.A5 Match against Capablanca
++2.A6 1921 - end of life
++2.B Assessment
++2.B1 Chess strength and style
++2.B2 Influence on chess
++2.b3 Work in other fields
++2.C Friends and relatives
++2.D Publications
++2.D1 Chess
++2.D2 Mathematics
++2.E Notable games
++2.F Tournament results
++2.G Match results
++3. Max Euwe - Emanuel Lasker, Zurich 1934
++1. Machgielis (Max) Euwe
Machgielis (Max) Euwe (May 20, 1901 - November 26, 1981) was a
Dutch chess Grandmaster, mathematician, and author. He was the
fifth player to become World Chess Champion (1935-1937). Euwe also
served as President of FIDE, the World Chess Federation, from 1970
to 1978.
++1.A Early years
Euwe was born in Watergraafsmeer, near Amsterdam. He studied
mathematics at the University of Amsterdam, earning his doctorate
in 1926, and taught mathematics, first in Rotterdam, and later at
a girls' Lyceum in Amsterdam. He published a mathematical analysis
of the game of chess from an intuitionistic point of view, in which
he showed, using the Thue-Morse sequence, that the then-official
rules did not exclude the possibility of infinite games.
++1.B Early career
Euwe won every Dutch chess championship that he participated in
from 1921 until 1952, and additionally won the title in 1955 - his
12 titles are still a record. 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. He became the world
amateur chess champion in 1928, at The Hague, with a score of
12/15.
Euwe had a young family and could only play competitive chess
during school vacations, so his opportunities for international
chess competition at the top level were limited. But he performed
well in the few tournaments and matches for which he could find
time from the early 1920s to the mid 1930s. Fine comments, "Euwe's
main international successes came in the form of narrow defeats" -
but these were in matches against the world's best: Alekhine
(1926), Capablanca (1931) and Spielmann (1935); and Euwe drew a
match with Flohr in 1932. His playing strength gradually increased,
so that by 1932 he and Flohr were regarded as Alekhine's most
credible challengers.
At Zurich 1934, Euwe finished second, behind only World Champion
Alexander Alekhine, and he defeated Alekhine in their game.
Alekhine was in an eight-year stretch, from 1927-35, where he lost
only six games in tournament play.
++1.C World Champion
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 15.5-14.5, becoming the fifth World Chess Champion.
Alekhine quickly went two games ahead, but from game 13 onwards
Euwe won twice as many games as Alekhine. His title gave a huge
boost to chess in The Netherlands. This was also the first world
championship match in which the players had seconds to help them
with analysis during adjournments.
Euwe's win was a major upset--he reportedly had believed that
beating Alekhine was unlikely - and is sometimes attributed to
Alekhine's alcoholism. But Salo Flohr, who was helping Euwe during
the match, thought over-confidence was more of a problem than
alcohol for Alekhine in this match, and Alekhine himself said he
would win easily. Former World Champions Vasily Smyslov, Boris
Spassky, Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov analyzed the match for
their own benefit and concluded that Euwe deserved to win and that
the standard of play was worthy of a world
championship. Vladimir Kramnik, ex-champion and still a strong
contender, said that Euwe won the 1935 match on merit and that the
result was not affected by Alekhine's drinking before or during the
match.
Euwe's performances in the great tournaments of Nottingham 1936 and
the 1938 AVRO tournament indicate he was a worthy champion, even if
he was not as dominant as the earlier champions. Reuben Fine wrote,
"In the two years before the return match, Euwe's strength
increased. Although he never enjoyed the supremacy over his rivals
that his predecessors had, he had no superiors in this period."
Euwe lost the title to Alekhine in a rematch in 1937, also played
in The Netherlands, by the lopsided margin of 15.5-9.5. Alekhine
had given up alcohol to prepare for the rematch, although he would
start drinking again later. Alekhine got back to the sort of form
he had shown from 1927-1935, when he dominated chess. The match was
a real contest initially, but Euwe's play collapsed near the end
and he lost four of the last five games. Fine, who was Euwe's
second in this match, attributed the collapse to nervous tension,
possibly aggravated by Euwe's attempts to maintain a calm
appearance.
The two world title matches against Alekhine represent the heart of
Euwe's career. Altogether, the two played 86 competitive games, and
Alekhine had a +28 -20 =38 lead, according to chessgames.com. Many
of Alekhine's wins came early in their series; he was nine years
older, and had more experience during that time. Then in the return
match, Alekhine won by six points. So, during the period 1925-1935,
the two were very closely matched.
++1.D Later career
Euwe finished equal fourth with Alekhine and Reshevsky in the AVRO
tournament of 1938 in The Netherlands, which featured the world's
top eight players and was an attempt to decide who should challenge
Alekhine for the world championship. Euwe also had a major
organizational role in the event.
He played a match with Paul Keres in The Netherlands in 1939-40,
losing 6.5-7.5.
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. However at 47, Euwe
was significantly older than the other players, and well past his
best. He finished last.
His final major tournament was the Candidates' Tournament in
Zurich, 1953, in which he finished next to last.
He played for The Netherlands in a total of seven Chess Olympiads,
from 1927 to 1962, a 35-year-span, always on first board. He scored
10.5/15 at London 1927, 9.5/13 at Stockholm 1937 for a bronze
medal, 8/12 at Dubrovnik 1950, 7.5/13 at Amsterdam 1954, 8.5/11 at
Munich 1958 for a silver medal at age 57, 6.5/16 at Leipzig 1960,
and finally 4/7 at Varna 1962. His aggregate was 54.5/87 for 62.6
per cent.
In 1957 Euwe played a short match against 14-year-old future world
champion Bobby Fischer, winning one game and drawing the other. His
lifetime score against Fischer was one win, one loss, and one draw.
Euwe won a total of 102 first prizes in tournaments during his
career. While it is true that many of those were local and were not
very strong, the total is very impressive, considering that Euwe
was never a true professional player.
++1.E FIDE President
From 1970 (when he was 69 years old) until 1978, he was president
of the FIDE. As president Euwe usually did what he considered
morally right rather than what was politically expedient. On
several occasions this brought him into conflict with the Soviet
Chess Federation, which thought it had the right to call the shots
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. These conflicts
included:
* The events leading up to Bobby Fischer's participation in
the World Chess Championship 1972 match against Spassky,
which led to Fischer's becoming the first non-Soviet
champion since World War II. Euwe thought it important for
the health and reputation of the game that Fischer should
have the opportunity to challenge for the title as soon as
possible and interpreted the rules very flexibly to enable
Fischer to play in the 1971 Candidates Tournament.
* The defection of grandmaster Gennadi Sosonko in 1972. The
Soviets demanded that Sosonko should be treated as an
"unperson", excluded from competitive chess, television or
any other event that might be evidence of his defection.
Euwe refused, and no Soviet players took part in the 1974
Wijk aan Zee tournament in The Netherlands because Sosonko
was playing in it.
* In 1976 world championship contender Viktor Korchnoi sought
political asylum in The Netherlands. In a discussion a few
days earlier Euwe told Korchnoi, "...of course you will
retain all your rights ..." and later opposed Soviet
efforts to prevent Korchnoi from challenging for Anatoly
Karpov's title in 1978.
* Later in 1976 Euwe supported FIDE's decision to hold the
1976 Chess Olympiad in Israel, which the Soviet Union did
not recognize as a country. The Central Committee of
Communist Party of the Soviet Union then started plotting
to depose Euwe as president of FIDE.
Of course Euwe lost some of the battles with the Soviets. For
example in 1973 he accepted the Soviets' demand that Bent Larsen
and Robert Huebner, the two strongest non-Soviet contenders
(Fischer was now champion), should play in the Leningrad Interzonal
tournament rather than the weaker one in Petrspolis. Unsurprisingly
Larsen and Huebner were eliminated from the competition for the
World Championship because Korchnoi and Karpov took the first 2
places at Leningrad. Some commentators have also questioned whether
Euwe did as much as he could have to prevent Fischer from
forfeiting his world title in 1975.
Despite the turbulence of the period most assessments of Euwe's
performance as president of FIDE are sympathetic:
* Spassky, who had nominated Euwe for the job: "He should
certainly not have disqualified Fischer, and he should have
been a little tougher with the Soviets.... you get a pile
of complicated problems. But Euwe, of course, was the man
for the job."
* Karpov said Euwe was a very good FIDE President, although
he did commit one very serious error, rapidly extending the
membership of FIDE to many small third-world countries.
"But neither he nor I could have foreseen what this would
lead to. ... This led not only to the inflation of the
grandmaster title, but also to the leadership vacuum at the
head of the world of chess."
* Garry Kasparov was blunter: "... unfortunately, he could
not foresee the dangers flowing from a FIDE practically
under Soviet dominance."
* Korchnoi regarded Euwe as the last honorable president of
FIDE.
* Yuri Averbakh, who was a Soviet chess official as well as
a grandmaster: "... he always sought to understand the
opposing point of view ... Such behavior was in sharp
contrast to the behavior of the Soviet delegation leaders
... Max Euwe was, without a doubt, the best President FIDE
ever had."
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.
++1.F Assessment of Euwe's chess
Euwe was noted for his logical approach and for his knowledge of
the openings, in which he made major contributions to chess
theory. Paradoxically his two title matches with Alexander Alekhine
were displays of tactical ferocity from both sides. But the
comments by Kmoch and Alekhine (below) may explain this: Euwe
"strode confidently into some extraordinarily complex variations"
if he thought logic was on his side; and he was extremely good at
calculating these variations. On the other hand he "often lacked
the stamina to pull himself out of bad positions".
Alekhine was allegedly more frank in his Russian-language articles
than in those he wrote in English, French or German. In his Russian
articles he often described Euwe as lacking in originality and in
the mental toughness required of a world champion. Gennadi Sosonko
thought Euwe's modesty was a handicap in top-class chess (although
Euwe was well aware of how much stronger he was than "ordinary"
grandmasters).
Vladimir Kramnik also says Euwe anticipated Botvinnik's emphasis on
technical preparation, and Euwe was usually in good shape
physically because he was a keen sportsman.
++1.G Chess books by Euwe
Euwe wrote over 70 chess books, far more than any other World
Champion; some of the best-known are The Road to Chess Mastery,
Judgement and Planning in Chess, The Logical Approach to Chess, and
Strategy and Tactics in Chess Play. Former Soviet grandmaster
Gennadi Sosonko used Euwe's Practical Chess Lessons (Practische
Schaaklessen) as a textbook when teaching in the Leningrad House of
Pioneers, and considers it "one of the best chess books ever".
Fischer World Champion, an account of the 1972 World Chess
Championship match, co-authored by Euwe with Jan Timman, was
written in 1972 but not published in English until 2002.
++1.H Other interesting accounts
In Amsterdam there is a Max Euwe Plein (square) (near the
Leidseplein) with a large chess set and statue, where the 'Max Euwe
Stichting' is located in a former jailhouse. It has a Max Euwe
museum and a large collection of chess books.
His granddaughter, Esmee Lammers, has written a children's book
called Lang Leve de Koningin (Long live the Queen), which is
popular among the youth. It is a fairytale about a young girl who
learns to play chess and at the same time finds her father. Lammers
filmed the story in 1995.
++1.I Notable chess games
* Max Euwe vs Efim Bogolyubov, Budapest 1921, French Defense,
MacCutcheon Variation (C12), 1-0 With wins like these, the
20-year-old Euwe was building his strength and experience.
* Max Euwe vs Geza Maroczy, Bad Aussee match 1921, game 4,
King's Gambit Declined (C30), 1-0 The great Maroczy was a
bit past his peak by this stage, spotting Euwe 31 years.
* Siegbert Tarrasch vs Max Euwe, Amsterdam 1923, King's
Indian Defense (E90), 0-1 In a battle of the two great
amateurs, Euwe foreshadows what is to come with the King's
Indian Defense in the years ahead.
* Sir George Thomas vs Max Euwe, Karlsbad 1923, English
Opening, Symmetrical Variation (A31), 0-1 In a very sharp
tactical game, Euwe displays a style which would become
very popular in upcoming years.
* Frank Marshall vs Max Euwe, Bad Kissingen 1928, Torre
Attack, King's Fianchetto Defense (A48), 0-1 Euwe again
adopts a kingside fianchetto to take off the legendary
attacker Marshall.
* Max Euwe vs Alexander Alekhine, Zurich 1934, Queen's Gambit
(D31), 1-0 White unleashes a lovely tactic with his 31st
move.
* Mikhail Botvinnik vs Max Euwe, Hastings 1934-35, Caro-Kann
Defense, Panov-Botvinnik Attack (B13), 0-1 The young Soviet
Botvinnik was playing his first tournament in the West, and
adopts his favourite line, to no avail.
* Alexander Alekhine vs Max Euwe, Amsterdam 1936, Four
Knights' Game (C49), 0-1 Euwe comes out on top after a very
hard-fought endgame.
* Max Euwe vs Alexander Alekhine, Zandvoort-Wch 1935 (26th
game of the match), Dutch (A90), 1-0 Game called "The Pearl
of Zandvoort"; the decisive victory of the match and at the
same time a beautiful demonstration of the strength of
passed pawns.
* Paul Keres vs Max Euwe, Zandvoort 1936, French Defense:
Advance Variation. Nimzowitsch System (C02), 0-1 Struggle
around the advanced White Pe5 transforms into an attack
against the White King.
* Max Euwe vs Alexander Alekhine, World Championship Match
1937, game 17, Slav Defense, Czech Variation (D19),(1-0)
Outstanding precision by the champion.
* Max Euwe vs Alexander Alekhine, World Championship Match
1937, game 29, Queen's Gambit (D40), 1-0 Alekhine called
this game Euwe's best of the entire series.
* Efim Geller vs Max Euwe, Zurich (candidates tournament)
1953 Nimzo-Indian Defense, Saemisch Variation, 0-1 Geller
tries to smash Euwe off the board, but Euwe sacrifices a
rook for a deadly counterattack.
* Max Euwe vs Robert James Fischer, New York m 1957, Queen's
Gambit Declined, Exchange Variation (D35), 1-0 The ex-
champion teaches the future champion how to attack in a
very witty short game.
* Max Euwe vs Alexander Alekhine, World Championship Match
1935, game 5, Dutch Defense (A91), 1-0 Euwe had been losing
3-1 in the match so far, but managed this impressive win to
turn the tide.
++1.J Quotations
* "Strategy requires thought; tactics requires observation."
- Max Euwe
* "Does the general public, do even our friends the critics
realize that Euwe virtually never made an unsound
combination? He may, of course, occasionally fail to take
account of an opponent's combination, but when he has the
initiative in a tactical operation his calculation is
impeccable." - Alexander Alekhine
* "If Richard Reti was interested only in the exceptions to
positional rules, then Max Euwe believed perhaps a little
too much in their immutability." - Alexander Alekhine
* "He is logic personified, a genius of law and order. One
would hardly call him an attacking player, yet he strides
confidently into some extraordinarily complex variations."
- Hans Kmoch
* "Euwe can only breathe freely when he is smothered in
work." - Hans Kmoch
* "Euwe resting would not be Euwe. His star is work, work,
and more work. Work is his entertainment, his strength and
his destiny." - Hans Kmoch
* "There's something wrong with that man. He's too normal." -
Bobby Fischer
++2. Emanuel Lasker
World Champion 1894-1921
Emanuel Lasker (December 24, 1868 - January 11, 1941) was a German
chess player, mathematician, and philosopher who was World Chess
Champion for 27 years. In his prime Lasker was one of the most
dominant champions, and he is still generally regarded as one of
the strongest players ever.
His contemporaries used to say that Lasker used a "psychological"
approach to the game, and even that he sometimes deliberately
played inferior moves to confuse opponents. Recent analysis,
however, indicates that he was ahead of his time and used a more
flexible approach than his contemporaries, which mystified many of
them. Lasker knew the openings well but disagreed with many
contemporary analyses. He published chess magazines and five chess
books, but later players and commentators found it difficult to
draw lessons from his methods.
He demanded high fees for playing matches and tournaments, which
aroused criticism at the time but contributed to the development of
chess as a professional career. The conditions which Lasker
demanded for World Championship matches in the last ten years of
his reign were controversial, and prompted attempts, particularly
by his successor Jose Raul Capablanca, to define agreed rules for
championship matches.
Lasker made contributions to the development of other games. He was
a first-class contract bridge player and wrote about this and other
games, including Go and his own invention, Lasca. His books about
games presented a problem which is still considered notable in the
mathematical analysis of card games. Besides, Lasker was a research
mathematician who was known for his contributions to commutative
algebra, as he defined the primary decomposition property of the
ideals of some commutative rings when he proved that polynomial
rings have the primary decomposition property. On the other hand,
his philosophical works and a drama that he co-authored received
little attention.
++2.A Life and career
++2.a1 Early years 1868-1894
Emanuel Lasker was born on December 24, 1868 at Berlinchen in
Neumark (now Barlinek in Poland), the son of a Jewish cantor. At
the age of eleven he was sent to Berlin to study mathematics, where
he lived with his brother Berthold, eight years his senior, who
taught him how to play chess. According to the website
Chessmetrics, Berthold was among the world's top ten players in the
early 1890s. To supplement their income Emanuel Lasker played chess
and card games for small stakes, especially at the Cafi Kaiserhof.
Emanuel Lasker shot up through the chess rankings in 1889, when he
won the Cafi Kaiserhof's annual Winter tournament 1888/89 and the
Hauptturnier A ("second division" tournament) at the sixth DSB
Congress (German Chess Federation's congress) held in Breslau. He
also finished second in an international tournament at Amsterdam,
ahead of some well-known masters, including Isidore Gunsberg
(assessed as the second strongest player in the world at that time
by Chessmetrics). In 1890 he finished third in Graz, then shared
first prize with his brother Berthold in a tournament in Berlin. In
spring 1892, he won two tournaments in London, the second and
stronger of these without losing a game. At New York 1893, he won
all thirteen games, one of the few times in chess history that a
player has achieved a perfect score in a significant tournament.
His record in matches was equally impressive: at Berlin in 1890 he
drew a short play-off match against his brother Berthold; and won
all his other matches from 1889 to 1893, mostly against top-class
opponents: Curt von Bardeleben (1889; ranked 9th best player in the
world by Chessmetrics at that time, Jacques Mieses (1889; ranked
11th, Henry Edward Bird (1890; then 60 years old; ranked 29th,
Berthold Englisch (1890; ranked 18th, Joseph Henry Blackburne
(1892, without losing a game; Blackburne was aged 51 then, but
still 9th in the world, Jackson Showalter (1892-1893; 22nd and
Celso Golmayo Zupide (1893; 29th Chessmetrics calculates that
Emanuel Lasker became the world's strongest player in
mid-1890, and that he was in the top ten from the very beginning of
his recorded career in 1889.
The players and tournament officials at the New York 1893
tournament
In 1892 Lasker founded the first of his chess magazines, The London
Chess Fortnightly, which was published from August 15, 1892 to July
30, 1893. In the second quarter of 1893 there was a gap of ten
weeks between issues, allegedly because of problems with the
printer. Shortly after its last issue Lasker traveled to the USA,
where he spent the next two years.
Lasker challenged Siegbert Tarrasch, who had won three consecutive
strong international tournaments (Breslau 1889, Manchester 1890,
and Dresden 1892), to a match. Tarrasch haughtily declined, stating
that Lasker should first prove his mettle by attempting to win one
or two major international events.
++2.A2 Chess competition 1894-1918
++2.A2a Match against Steinitz
Wilhelm Steinitz, whom Lasker beat in World Championship matches in
1894 and 1896
Rebuffed by Tarrasch, Lasker challenged the reigning World Champion
Wilhelm Steinitz to a match for the title. Initially Lasker wanted
to play for US $5,000 a side and a match was agreed at stakes of
$3,000 a side, but Steinitz agreed to a series of reductions when
Lasker found it difficult to raise the money. The final figure was
$2,000, which was less than for some of Steinitz' earlier matches
(the final combined stake of $4,000 would be worth over $495,000 at
2006 values. Although this was publicly praised as an act of
sportsmanship on Steinitz' part, Steinitz may have desperately
needed the money. The match was played in 1894, at venues in New
York, Philadelphia, and Montreal. Steinitz had previously declared
he would win without doubt, so it came as a shock when Lasker won
the first game. Steinitz responded by winning the second, and was
able to maintain the balance through the sixth. However, Lasker won
all the games from the seventh to the eleventh, and Steinitz asked
for a week's rest. When the match resumed, Steinitz looked in
better shape and won the 13th and 14th games. Lasker struck back in
the 15th and 16th, and Steinitz was unable to compensate for his
losses in the middle of the match. Hence Lasker won convincingly
with ten wins, five losses and four
draws. Lasker thus became the second formally-recognized World
Chess Champion, and confirmed his title by beating Steinitz even
more convincingly in their re-match in 1896-1897 (ten wins, five
draws, and two losses).
++2.A2b Successes in tournaments
Sketch of Lasker, ca. 1894
Influential players and journalists belittled the 1894 match both
before and after it took place. Lasker's difficulty in getting
backing may have been caused by hostile pre-match comments from
Gunsberg and Leopold Hoffer, who had long been a bitter enemy of
Steinitz. One of the complaints was that Lasker had never played
the other two members of the top four, Siegbert Tarrasch and
Mikhail Chigorin - although Tarrasch had rejected a challenge from
Lasker in 1892, publicly telling him to go and win an international
tournament first. After the match some commentators, notably
Tarrasch, said Lasker had won mainly because Steinitz was old (58
in 1894).
Emanuel Lasker answered these criticisms by creating an even more
impressive playing record. Before World War I broke out his most
serious "setbacks" were third place at Hastings 1895 (where he may
have been suffering from the after-effects of typhoid), tie for
second at Cambridge Springs 1904, and tie for first at the Chigorin
Memorial in St. Petersburg 1909. He won first prizes at very strong
tournaments in St. Petersburg (1895-1896, Quadrangular), Nuremberg
(1896), London (1899), Paris (1900) and St. Petersburg (1914),
where he overcame a 1= point deficit to finish ahead of the rising
stars, Capablanca and Alexander Alekhine, who later became the next
two World Champions. For decades chess writers have reported that
Tsar Nicholas II of Russia conferred the title of "Grandmaster of
Chess" upon each of the five finalists at St. Petersburg 1914
(Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall), but chess
historian Edward Winter has questioned this, stating that the
earliest known sources supporting this story were published in 1940
and
1942.
++2.A2c Matches against Marshall and Tarrasch
Lasker's match record was as impressive between his 1896-1897 re-
match with Steinitz and 1914: he won all but one of his normal
matches, and three of those were convincing defenses of his title.
He first faced Marshall in the World Chess Championship 1907, when
despite his aggressive style, Marshall could not win a single game,
losing eight and drawing seven (final score: 11.5-3.5).
He then played Tarrasch in the World Chess Championship 1908, first
at Duesseldorf then at Munich. Tarrasch firmly believed the game of
chess was governed by a precise set of principles. For him the
strength of a chess move was in its logic, not in its efficiency.
Because of his stubborn principles he considered Lasker as a
coffeehouse player who won his games only thanks to dubious tricks,
while Lasker mocked the arrogance of Tarrasch who, in his opinion,
shone more in salons than at the chessboard. At the opening
ceremony, Tarrasch refused to talk to Lasker, only saying: "Mr.
Lasker, I have only three words to say to you: check and mate!"
Lasker gave a brilliant answer on the chessboard, winning four of
the first five games, and playing a type of chess Tarrasch could
not understand. For example, in the second game after 19 moves
arose a situation (see diagram) in which Lasker was a pawn down,
with a bad bishop and doubled pawns. At this point it appeared
Tarrasch was winning, but 20 moves later he was forced to resign.
Lasker eventually won by 10= -5= (eight wins, five draws, and three
losses). Tarrasch claimed the wet weather was the cause of his
defeat.
Diagram:
White: King at f2, Queen at a7, Rooks at a1 and e1, Knight at f5,
Pawns at a2, b3, c2, e4, g2, h2
Black: King at h8, Queen at d7, Rooks at d8 and e8, Bishop at e7,
Pawns at c6, c7, d6, f6, h7
Tarrasch-Lasker
Position after 19. Qxa7
++2.A2d Matches against Janowski
In 1909 Lasker drew a short match (two wins, two losses) against
Dawid Janowski, an all-out attacking Polish expatriate. Several
months later they played a longer match, and chess historians still
debate whether this was for the World Chess
Championship. Understanding Janowski's style, Lasker chose to
defend solidly so that Janowski unleashed his attacks too soon and
left himself vulnerable. Lasker easily won the match 8-2 (seven
wins, two draws, one loss). This victory was convincing for
everyone but Janowski, who asked for a revenge match. Lasker
accepted and they played World Chess Championship match in Paris in
November-December 1910. Lasker crushed his opponent, winning 9= -1=
(eight wins, three draws, no losses). Janowski was not able to
understand Lasker's moves, and after his first three losses he
declared to Edward Lasker, "Your homonym plays so stupidly that I
cannot even look at the chessboard when he thinks. I am afraid I
will not do anything good in this match."
++2.A2E Match against Schlechter
Between his two matches against Janowski, Lasker arranged another
World Chess Championship in January-February 1910 against Carl
Schlechter. Schlechter was a modest gentleman, who was generally
unlikely to win the major chess tournaments by his peaceful
inclination, his lack of aggressiveness and his willingness to
accept most draw offers from his opponents (about 80% of his games
finished by a draw). The conditions of the match against Lasker are
still debated among chess historians, but it seems Schlechter
accepted to play under very unfavourable conditions, notably that
he would need to finish two points ahead of Lasker to be declared
the winner of the match, and he would need to win a revenge match
to be declared World Champion. The match was originally meant to
consist of 30 games, but when it became obvious that there were
insufficient funds (Lasker demanded a fee of 1,000 marks per game
played), the number of games was reduced to ten, making the margin
of two points all the more difficult.
At the beginning, Lasker tried to attack but Schlechter had no
difficulty defending, so that the first four games finished in
draws. In the fifth game Lasker had a big advantage, but committed
a blunder that cost him the game. Hence at the middle of the match
Schlechter was one point ahead. The next four games were drawn,
despite fierce play from both players. In the sixth Schlechter
managed to draw a game being a pawn down. In the seventh Lasker
nearly lost because of a beautiful exchange sacrifice from
Schlechter. In the ninth only a blunder from Lasker allowed
Schlechter to draw a lost ending. The score before the last game
was thus 5-4 for Schlechter. In the tenth game Schlechter tried to
win tactically and took a big advantage, but he missed a clear win
at the 35th move, continued to take increasing risks and finished
by losing. Hence the match was a draw and Lasker remained World
Champion.
++2.A2f Abortive challenges
Jose Raul Capablanca won the world title from Lasker in 1921.
In 1911 Lasker received a challenge for a world title match against
the rising star Jose Raul Capablanca. Lasker was unwilling to play
the traditional "first to win ten games" type of match in the semi-
tropical conditions of Havana, especially as drawn games were
becoming more frequent and the match might last for over six
months. He therefore made a counter-proposal: if neither player had
a lead of at least two games by the end of the match, it should be
considered a draw; the match should be limited to the best of
thirty games, counting draws; except that if either player won six
games and led by at least two games before thirty games were
completed, he should be declared the winner; the champion should
decide the venue and stakes, and should have the exclusive right to
publish the games; the challenger should deposit a forfeit of US
$2,000 (equivalent to over $194,000 in 2006 values; the time limit
should be twelve moves per hour; play should be limited to two
sessions of 2= hours each per day, five days a week. Capablanca
objected to the time limit, the short playing times, the thirty-
game limit, and especially the requirement that he must win by two
games to claim the title, which he regarded as unfair. Lasker took
offence at the terms in which Capablanca criticized the two-game
lead condition and broke off negotiations, and until 1914 Lasker
and Capablanca were not on speaking terms. However, at the 1914 St.
Petersburg tournament, Capablanca proposed a set of rules for the
conduct of World Championship matches, which were accepted by all
the leading players including Lasker.
Late in 1912 Lasker entered into negotiations for a world title
match with Akiba Rubinstein, whose tournament record for the
previous few years had been on a par with Lasker's and a little
ahead of Capablanca's. The two players agreed to play a match if
Rubinstein could raise the funds, but Rubinstein had few rich
friends to back him and the match was never played. The start of
World War I put an end to hopes that Lasker would play either
Rubinstein or Capablanca for the World Championship in the near
future. Throughout World War I (1914-1918) Lasker played in only
two serious chess events. He convincingly won (5= -=) a non-title
match against Tarrasch in 1916. In
September-October 1918, shortly before the armistice, he won a
quadrangular (four-player) tournament, half a point ahead of
Rubinstein.
++2.A3 Academic activities 1894-1918
David Hilbert encouraged Lasker to obtain a Ph.D in mathematics.
Despite his superb playing results, chess was not Lasker's only
interest. His parents recognized his intellectual talents,
especially for mathematics, and sent the adolescent Emanuel to
study in Berlin (where he found he also had a talent for chess).
Lasker gained his abitur (high school graduation certificate) at
Landsberg an der Warthe, now a Polish town named Gorzsw
Wielkopolski but then part of Prussia. He then studied mathematics
and philosophy at the universities in Berlin, Gottingen and
Heidelberg.
In 1895 Lasker published two mathematical articles in
Nature. On the advice of David Hilbert he registered for doctoral
studies at Erlangen during
1900-1902. In 1901 he presented his doctoral thesis \ber Reihen auf
der Convergenzgrenze ("On Series at Convergence Boundaries") at
Erlangen and in the same year it was published by the Royal
Society. He was awarded a doctorate in mathematics in 1902. His
most significant mathematical article, in 1905, published a theorem
of which Emmy Noether developed a more generalized form, which is
now regarded as of fundamental importance to modern algebra and
algebraic geometry.
Lasker held short-term positions as a mathematics lecturer at
Tulane University in New Orleans (1893) and Victoria University in
Manchester (1901; Victoria University was one of the "parents" of
the current University of Manchester). However he was unable to
secure a longer-term position, and pursued his scholarly interests
independently.
In 1906 Lasker published a booklet titled Kampf (Struggle), in
which he attempted to create a general theory of all competitive
activities, including chess, business and war. He produced two
other books which are generally categorized as philosophy, Das
Begreifen der Welt (Comprehending the World; 1913) and Die
Philosophie des Unvollendbar (The Philosophy of the Unattainable;
1918).
++2.A4 Other activities 1894-1918
In 1896-1897 Lasker published his book Common Sense in Chess, based
on lectures he had given in London in 1895.
Rice Gambit
Position after 1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Nf3 g5 4. h4 g4 5. Ne5 Nf6 6.
Bc4 d5 7. exd5 Bd6 8. 0-0 -- White sacrifices the Knight on e5, in
order to get his King to safety and enable a Rook to join the
attack against the under-developed Black position.
In 1903, Lasker played in Ostend against Mikhail Chigorin, a six-
game match that was sponsored by the wealthy lawyer and
industrialist Isaac Rice in order to test the Rice Gambit. Lasker
narrowly lost the match. Three years later Lasker became secretary
of the Rice Gambit Association, founded by Rice in order to promote
the Rice Gambit, and in 1907 Lasker quoted with approval Rice's
views on the convergence of chess and military strategy.
In November 1904, Lasker founded Lasker's Chess Magazine, which ran
until 1909.
For a short time in 1906 Emanuel Lasker was interested in the
strategy game Go, but soon returned to chess. Curiously he was
introduced to the game by his namesake Edward Lasker, who wrote a
successful book Go and Go-Moku in 1934.
At the age of 42, in July 1911, Lasker married Martha Cohn (nie
Bamberger), a rich widow who was a year older than Lasker and
already a grandmother. They lived in Berlin.
Martha Cohn wrote popular stories under the pseudonym "L. Marco".
During World War I, Lasker invested all of his savings in German
war bonds. Since Germany lost the war, Lasker lost all his money.
During the war, he wrote a book which claimed that civilization
would be in danger if Germany lost the war.
++2.A5 Match against Capablanca
In January 1920 Lasker and Jose Raul Capablanca signed an agreement
to play a World Championship match in 1921, noting that Capablanca
was not free to play in 1920. Because of the delay Lasker insisted
on a final clause that: allowed him to play anyone else for the
championship in 1920; nullified the contract with Capablanca if
Lasker lost a title match in 1920; and stipulated that if Lasker
resigned the title Capablanca should become World Champion. Lasker
had previously included in his agreement before World War I to play
Akiba Rubinstein for the title a similar clause that if he resigned
the title, it should become Rubinstein's.
A report in the American Chess Bulletin (July-August 1920 issue)
said that Lasker had resigned the world title in favor of
Capablanca because the conditions of the match were unpopular in
the chess world. The American Chess Bulletin speculated that the
conditions were not sufficiently unpopular to warrant resignation
of the title, and that Lasker's real concern was that there was not
enough financial backing to justify his devoting nine months to the
match. When Lasker resigned the title in favor of Capablanca he was
unaware that enthusiasts in Havana had just raised $20,000 to fund
the match provided it was played there. When Capablanca learned of
Lasker's resignation he went to Holland, where Lasker was living at
the time, to inform him that Havana would finance the match. In
August 1920 Lasker agreed to play in Havana, but insisted that he
was the challenger as Capablanca was now the champion. Capablanca
signed an agreement that accepted this point, and soon afterwards
published a letter confirming this. Lasker also stated that, if he
beat Capablanca, he would resign the title so that younger masters
could compete for it.
The match was played in March-April 1921. After four draws, the
fifth game saw Lasker blunder with Black in an equal ending.
Capablanca's solid style allowed him to easily draw the next four
games, without taking any risks. In the tenth game, Lasker as White
played a position with an isolated queen pawn but failed to create
the necessary activity and Capablanca reached a superior ending,
which he duly won. The eleventh and fourteenth games were also won
by Capablanca, and Lasker resigned the match.
Reuben Fine and Harry Golombek attributed this to Lasker's being in
mysteriously poor form. On the other hand Vladimir Kramnik thought
that Lasker played quite well and the match was an "even and
fascinating fight" until Lasker blundered in the last game, and
explained that Capablanca was twenty years younger, a slightly
stronger player, and had more recent competitive practice.
++2.A6 1921 - end of life
By this time Lasker was nearly 53 years old, and he never played
another serious match; his only other match was a short exhibition
against Frank James Marshall in 1940, which he won. After winning
the New York 1924 chess tournament (1.5 points ahead of Capablanca)
and finishing second at Moscow in 1925 (1.5 points behind Efim
Bogoljubow, .5 point ahead of Capablanca), he effectively retired
from serious chess.
During the Moscow 1925 chess tournament, Emanuel Lasker received a
telegram informing him that the drama written by himself and his
brother Berthold, Vom Menschen die Geschichte ("History of
Mankind"), had been accepted for performance at the Lessing theatre
in Berlin. Emanuel Lasker was so distracted by this news that he
lost badly to Carlos Torre the same day. The play, however, was not
a success.
In 1926 Lasker wrote Lehrbuch des Schachspiels, which he re-wrote
in English in 1927 as Lasker's Manual of Chess. He also wrote books
on other games of mental skill: Encyclopedia of Games (1929) and
Das verstdndige Kartenspiel (means "Sensible Card Play"; 1929;
English translation in the same year), both of which posed a
problem in the mathematical analysis of card games; Brettspiele der
Vvlker ("Board Games of the Nations"; 1931), which includes 30
pages about Go and a section about a game he had invented in 1911,
Lasca; and Das Bridgespiel ("The Game of Bridge"; 1931). Lasker
became an expert bridge player, representing Germany at
international events in the early 1930s, and a registered teacher
of the Culbertson system.
In October 1928 Emanuel Lasker's brother Berthold
died.
In spring 1933 Adolf Hitler started a campaign of
discrimination and intimidation against Jews, depriving them of
their property and citizenship. Lasker and his wife Martha, who
were both Jewish, were forced to leave Germany in the same year.
After a short stay in England, in 1935 they were invited to live in
the USSR by Nikolai Krylenko, the Commissar of Justice who was
responsible for the Moscow show trials and, in his other capacity
as Sports Minister, was an enthusiastic supporter of chess. In the
USSR, Lasker renounced his German citizenship and received Soviet
citizenship. He took permanent residence in Moscow, and was given
a post at Moscow's Institute for Mathematics and a post of trainer
of the USSR national team. Lasker returned to competitive chess to
make some money, finishing fifth in Zurich 1934 and third in Moscow
1935 (undefeated, .5 point behind Mikhail Botvinnik and Salo Flohr;
ahead of Capablanca, Rudolf Spielmann and several Soviet masters),
sixth in Moscow 1936 and seventh equal in Nottingham 1936. His
performance in Moscow 1935 at age 66 was hailed as "a biological
miracle."
Unfortunately Stalin's Great Purge started at about the same time
the Laskers arrived in the USSR. In August 1937, Martha and Emanuel
Lasker decided to leave the Soviet Union, and they moved, via the
Netherlands, to the United States (first Chicago, next New York) in
October 1937. In the following year Emanuel Lasker's patron,
Krylenko, was purged. Lasker tried to support himself by giving
chess and bridge lectures and exhibitions, as he was now too old
for serious competition. In 1940 he published his last book, The
Community of the Future, in which he proposed solutions for serious
political problems, including anti-Semitism and
unemployment. He died of a kidney infection in New York on January
11, 1941, at the age of 72, as a charity patient at the Mount Sinai
Hospital. He was buried in the Beth Olom Cemetery, Queens, New
York. His was survived by his wife Martha and his sister, Mrs.
Lotta Hirschberg.
++2.B Assessment
++2.B1 Chess strength and style
Lasker was considered to have a "psychological" method of play in
which he considered the subjective qualities of his opponent, in
addition to the objective requirements of his position on the
board. Richard Reti published a lengthy analysis of Lasker's play
in which he concluded that Lasker deliberately played inferior
moves that he knew would make his opponent uncomfortable. W. H. K.
Pollock commented, "It is no easy matter to reply correctly to
Lasker's bad moves."
Lasker himself denied the claim that he deliberately played bad
moves, and most modern writers agree. According to Grandmaster
Andrew Soltis and International Master John L. Watson, the features
that made his play mysterious to contemporaries now appear
regularly in modern play: the g2-g4 "Spike" attack against the
Dragon Sicilian; sacrifices to gain positional advantage; playing
the "practical" move rather than trying to find the best move;
counterattacking and complicating the game before a disadvantage
became serious. Former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik writes, "He
realized that different types of advantage could be
interchangeable: tactical edge could be converted into strategic
advantage and vice versa", which mystified contemporaries who were
just becoming used to the theories of Steinitz as codified by
Siegbert Tarrasch.
The famous win against Jose Raul Capablanca at St. Petersburg in
1914, which Lasker needed in order to retain any chance of catching
up with Capablanca, is sometimes offered as evidence of his
"psychological" approach. Reuben Fine describes Lasker's choice of
opening, the Exchange Variation of the Ruy Lopez, as "innocuous but
psychologically potent." However, an analysis of Lasker's use of
this variation throughout his career concludes that he had
excellent results with it as White against top-class opponents, and
sometimes used it in "must-win" situations. Ludek Pachman writes
that Lasker's choice presented his opponent with a dilemma: with
only a = point lead, Capablanca would have wanted to play safe; but
the Exchange Variation's pawn structure gives White an endgame
advantage, and Black must use his bishop pair aggressively in the
middle game to nullify this. In Kramnik's opinion, Lasker's play in
this game demonstrated deep positional understanding, rather than
psychology.
Fine reckoned Lasker paid little attention to the openings., but
Capablanca thought Lasker knew the openings very well, but
disagreed with a lot of contemporary opening analysis. In fact
before the 1894 world title match Lasker studied the openings
thoroughly, especially Steinitz' favorite lines. In Capablanca's
opinion, no player surpassed Lasker in the ability to assess a
position quickly and accurately, in terms of who had the better
prospects of winning and what strategy each side should adopt.
Capablanca also wrote that Lasker was so adaptable that he played
in no definite style, and that he was both a tenacious defender and
a very efficient finisher of his own attacks.
In addition to his enormous chess skill Lasker had an excellent
competitive temperament: his bitter rival Siegbert Tarrasch once
said, "Lasker occasionally loses a game, but he never loses his
head." Lasker enjoyed the need to adapt to varying styles and to
the shifting fortunes of tournaments. Although very strong in
matches, he was even stronger in tournaments. For over twenty
years, he always finished ahead of the younger Capablanca: at St.
Petersburg 1914, New York 1924, Moscow 1925, and Moscow 1935. Only
in 1936 (15 years after their match), when Lasker was 67, was
Capablanca able to finish ahead of him.
In 1964, Chessworld magazine published an article in which future
World Champion Bobby Fischer listed the ten greatest players in
history. Fischer did not include Lasker in the list, deriding him
as a "coffee-house player (who) knew nothing about openings and
didn't understand positional chess." In a poll of the world's
leading players taken sometime after Fischer's list appeared, Tal,
Korchnoi, and Robert Byrne all said that Lasker was the greatest
player ever. Both Pal Benko and Byrne said that Fischer later
reconsidered and admitted that Lasker was a great player.
Statistical ranking systems place Lasker high among the greatest
players of all time. The book Warriors of the Mind places him
sixth, behind Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov, Fischer, Mikhail
Botvinnik and Capablanca. In his 1978 book The Rating of
Chessplayers, Past and Present, Arpad Elo gave retrospective
ratings to players based on their performance over the best five-
year span of their career. He concluded that Lasker was the joint
second strongest player of those surveyed (tied with Botvinnik and
behind Capablanca). The most up-to-date system, Chessmetrics, is
rather sensitive to the length of the periods being compared, and
ranks Lasker between fifth and second strongest of all time for
peak periods ranging in length from one to twenty years. Its
author, the statistician Jeff Sonas, concluded that only Kasparov
and Karpov surpassed Lasker's long-term dominance of the game. By
Chessmetrics' reckoning, Lasker was the number 1 player in 292
different months - a total of over 24 years. His first No. 1 rank
was in June 1890, and his last in December 1926 - a span of 36=
years. Chessmetrics also considers him the strongest 67-year-old in
history: in December 1935, at age 67 years and 0 months, his rating
was 2691 (number 7 in the world), well above second-place Viktor
Korchnoi's rating at that age (2660, number 39 in the world, in
March 1998).
++2.B2 Influence on chess
Lasker at home in Berlin, in 1933
Lasker founded no school of players who played in a similar style.
Max Euwe, World Champion 1935-37 and a prolific writer of chess
manuals, who had a lifetime 0-3 score against Lasker, said, "It is
not possible to learn much from him. One can only stand and
wonder." However Lasker's pragmative, combative approach had a
great influence on Soviet players like Mikhail Tal and Viktor
Korchnoi.
There are several "Lasker Variations" in the chess openings,
including Lasker's Defense to the Queen's Gambit, Lasker's Defense
to the Evans Gambit (which effectively ended the use of this gambit
in tournament play until a revival in the 1990s), and the Lasker
Variation in the McCutcheon Variation of the French Defense.
One of Lasker's most famous games is Lasker - Bauer, Amsterdam
1889, in which he sacrificed both bishops in a maneuver later
repeated in a number of games. Similar sacrifices had already been
played by Cecil Valentine De Vere and John Owen, but these were not
in major events and Lasker probably had not seen them.
Lasker was shocked by the poverty in which Wilhelm Steinitz died
and did not intend to die in similar circumstances. He became
notorious for demanding high fees for playing matches and
tournaments, and he argued that players should own the copyright in
their games rather than let publishers get all the
profits. These demands initially angered editors and other players,
but helped to pave the way for the rise of full-time chess
professionals who earn most of their living from playing, writing
and teaching. Copyright in chess games had been contentious at
least as far back as the mid-1840s, and Steinitz and Lasker
vigorously asserted that players should own the copyright and wrote
copyright clauses into their match contracts. However Lasker's
demands that challengers should raise large purses prevented or
delayed some eagerly-awaited World Championship matches -- for
example Frank James Marshall challenged him in 1904 to a match for
the World Championship but could not raise the stakes demanded by
Lasker until 1907. This problem continued throughout the reign of
his successor Capablanca.
Some of the controversial conditions that Lasker insisted on for
championship matches led Capablanca to attempt twice (1914 and
1922) to publish rules for such matches, to which other top players
readily agreed.
++2.B3 Work in other fields
Lasker was also a mathematician. In his 1905 article on
commutative algebra, Lasker introduced the theory of primary
decomposition of ideals, which has influence in the theory of
Noetherian rings. Rings having the primary decomposition property
are called "Laskerian rings" in his honor.
His attempt to create a general theory of all competitive
activities were followed by more consistent efforts from von
Neumann on game theory, and his later writings about card games
presented a significant issue in the mathematical analysis of card
games.
However, his dramatic and philosophical works have never been
highly regarded.
++2.C Friends and relatives
Lasker was a good friend of Albert Einstein, who wrote the
introduction to the posthumous biography Emanuel Lasker, The Life
of a Chess Master from Dr. Jacques Hannak (1952). In this preface
Einstein express his satisfaction at having met Lasker, writing:
Emanuel Lasker was undoubtedly one of the most interesting people
I came to know in my later years. We must be thankful to those who
have penned the story of his life for this and succeeding
generations. For there are few men who have had a warm interest in
all the great human problems and at the same time kept their
personality so uniquely independent.
Poetess Else Lasker-Schueler was his sister-in-law. Edward Lasker,
born in Kempen (Kepno), Greater Poland (then Prussia), the German-
American chess master, engineer, and author, claimed that he was
distantly related to Emanuel Lasker. They both played in the great
New York 1924 chess tournament.
++2.D Publications
++2.D1 Chess
* The London Chess Fortnightly, 1892-1893
* Common Sense in Chess, 1896 (an abstract of 12 lectures
delivered to a London audience in 1895)
* Lasker's How to Play Chess: An Elementary Text Book for
Beginners, Which Teaches Chess By a New, Easy and
Comprehensive Method, 1900
* Lasker's Chess Magazine, OCLC 5002324, 1904-1907.
* The International Chess Congress, St. Petersburg, 1909,
1910
* Lasker's Manual of Chess, 1925, is as famous in chess
circles for its philosophical tone as for its content.
* Lehrbuch des Schachspiels, 1926 - English version Lasker's
Manual of Chess published in 1927.
* Lasker's Chess Primer, 1934.
++2.D2 Mathematics
* Lasker, Emanuel (August 1895). "Metrical Relations of Plane
Spaces of n Manifoldness". Nature 52 (1345): 340-343.
* Lasker, Emanuel (October 1895). "About a certain Class of
Curved Lines in Space of n Manifoldness". Nature 52 (1355):
596.
++2.E Notable games
* Emanuel Lasker vs Johann Hermann Bauer, Amsterdam 1889.
Although this was not the earliest known game with a
successful two bishops sacrifice, this combination is now
known as a "Lasker-Bauer combination" or "Lasker
sacrifice".
* Harry Nelson Pillsbury vs Emanuel Lasker, St. Petersburg
1895. A brilliant sacrifice in the seventeenth move leads
to a victorious attack.
* Wilhelm Steinitz vs Emanuel Lasker, London 1899. The old
champion and the new one really go for it.
* Frank James Marshall vs Emanuel Lasker, World Championship
Match 1907, game 1. Lasker's attack is insufficient for a
quick win, so he trades it in for an endgame in which he
quickly ties Marshall in knots.
* Emanuel Lasker vs Carl Schlechter, match 1910, game 10. Not
a great game, but the one that saved Emanuel Lasker from
losing his world title in 1910.
* Emanuel Lasker vs Jose Raul Capablanca, St. Petersburg
1914. Lasker, who needed a win here, surprisingly used a
quiet opening, allowing Capablanca to simplify the game
early. There has been much debate about whether Lasker's
approach represented subtle psychology or deep positional
understanding.
* Max Euwe vs Emanuel Lasker, Zurich 1934. 66-year old Lasker
beats a future World Champion, sacrificing his Queen to
turn defense into attack.
++2.F Tournament results
1888/89 Berlin (Cafe Kaiserhof)
1st 20/20 +20 -0 =0
1889 Breslau "B"
Equal 1st 12/15 +11 -2 =2 Tied with von Feyerfeil and won
the playoff. This was Hauptturnier A of the sixth DSB
Congress, i.e. the "second-division" tournament.
1889 Amsterdam "A" tournament
2nd 6/8 +5 -1 =2 Behind Amos Burn; ahead of James Mason,
Isidor Gunsberg and others. This was the stronger of the
two Amsterdam tournaments held at that time.
1890 Berlin
1-2 6.5/8 +6 -1 =1 Tied with his brother Berthold Lasker.
1890 Graz
3rd 4/6 +3 -1 =2 Behind Gyula Makovetz and Johann Hermann
Bauer.
1892 London
1st 9/11 +8 -1 =2 Ahead of Mason and Rudolf Loman.
1892 London
1st 6.5/8 +5 -0 =3 Ahead of Joseph Henry Blackburne, Mason,
Gunsberg and Henry Edward Bird.
1893 New York City
1st 13/13 +13 -0 =0 Ahead of Adolf Albin, Jackson Showalter
and a newcomer called Harry Nelson Pillsbury.
1895 Hastings
3rd 15.5/21 +14 -4 =3 Behind Pillsbury and Mikhail
Chigorin; ahead of Siegbert Tarrasch, Wilhelm Steinitz and
the rest of a strong field.
1895/96 St. Petersburg
1st 11.5/18 +8 -3 =7 A Quadrangular tournament; ahead of
Steinitz (by two points), Pillsbury and Chigorin.
1896 Nuremberg
1st 13.5/18 +12 -3 =3 Ahead of Giza Marsczy, Pillsbury,
Tarrasch, Dawid Janowski, Steinitz and the rest of a strong
field.
1899 London
1st 23=/28 +20 -1 =7 Ahead of Janowski, Pillsbury, Marsczy,
Carl Schlechter, Blackburne, Chigorin and several other
strong players.
1900 Paris
1st 14.5/16 +14 -1 =1 Ahead of Pillsbury (by two points),
Frank James Marshall, Marsczy, Burn, Chigorin and several
others.
1904 Cambridge Springs
2nd = 11/15 +9 -2 =4 Tied with Janowski; two points behind
Marshall; ahead of Georg Marco, Showalter, Schlechter,
Chigorin, Jacques Mieses, Pillsbury and others.
1906 Trenton Falls
1st 5/6 +4 -0 =2 A Quadrangular tournament; ahead of Curt,
Albert Fox and Raubitschek.
1909 St. Petersburg
Equal 1st 14.5/18 +13 -2 =3 Tied with Akiba Rubinstein;
ahead of Oldrich Duras and Rudolf Spielmann (by 3.5
points), Ossip Bernstein, Richard Teichmann and several
other strong players.
1914 St. Petersburg
1st 13.5/18 +10 -1 =7 Ahead of Jose Raul Capablanca,
Alexander Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall. This tournament
had an unusual structure: there was a preliminary
tournament in which eleven players played each other player
once; the top five players then played a separate final
tournament in which each player who made the "cut" played
the other finalists twice; but their scores from the
preliminary tournament were carried forward. Even the
preliminary tournament would now be considered a "super-
tournament". Capablanca "won" the preliminary tournament by
1.5 points without losing a game, but Lasker achieved a
plus score against all his opponents in the final
tournament and finished with a combined score .5 point
ahead of Capablanca's.
1918 Berlin
1st 4.5/6 +3 -0 =3 Quadrangular tournament. Ahead of
Rubinstein, Schlechter and Tarrasch.
1923 Moravska Ostrava
1st 10.5/13 +8 -0 =5 Ahead of Richard Reti, Ernst
Gruenfeld, Alexey Selezniev, Savielly Tartakower, Max Euwe
and other strong players.
1924 New York City
1st 16/20 +13 -1 =6 Ahead of Capablanca (by 1.5 points),
Alekhine, Marshall, and the rest of a very strong field.
1925 Moscow
2nd 14/20 +10 -2 =8 Behind Efim Bogoljubow; ahead of
Capablanca, Marshall, Tartakower, Carlos Torre, other
strong non-Soviet players and the leading Soviet players.
1934 Zurich
5th 10/15 +9 -4 =2 Behind Alekhine, Euwe, Salo Flohr and
Bogoljubow; ahead of Bernstein, Aron Nimzowitsch, Gideon
Stahlberg and various others.
1935 Moscow
3rd 12.5/19 +6 -0 =13 half a point behind Mikhail Botvinnik
and Flohr; ahead of Capablanca, Spielmann, Ilya Kan,
Grigory Levenfish, Andor Lilienthal, Viacheslav Ragozin and
others. Emanuel Lasker was about 67 years old at the time.
1936 Moscow
6th 8/18 +3 -5 =10 Capablanca won.
1936 Nottingham
7-8th 8.5/14 +6 -3 =5 Capablanca and Botvinnik tied for
first place.
++2.G Match results
Here are Lasker's results in matches.
1889 E.R. von Feyerfeil
Won Breslau 1-0 +1 -0 =0 Play-off match
1889/90 Curt von Bardeleben
Won Berlin 2.5-1.5 +2 -1 =1
1889/90 Jacques Mieses
Won Leipzig 6.5-1.5 +5 -0 =3
1890 Berthold Lasker
Drew Berlin .5-.5 +0 -0 =1 Play-off match
1890 Henry Edward Bird
Won Liverpool 8.5-3.5 +7 -2 =3
1890 N.T. Miniati
Won Manchester 4-1 +3 -0 =2
1890 Berthold Englisch
Won Vienna 3.5-1.5 +2 -0 =3
1891 Francis Joseph Lee
Won London 1.5-.5 +1 -0 =1
1892 Joseph Henry Blackburne
Won London 8-2 +6 -0 =4
1892 Bird
Won Newcastle upon Tyne 5 -0 +5 -0 =0
1892/93 Jackson Showalter
Won Logansport and Kokomo, Indiana 7-3 +6 -2 =2
1893 Celso Golmayo Zupide
Won Havana 2.5-.5 +2 -0 =1
1893 Andres Clemente Vazquez
Won Havana 3-0 +3 -0 =0
1893 A. Ponce
Won Havana 2-0 +2 -0 =0
1893 Alfred Ettlinger
Won New York City 5-0 +5 -0 =0
1894 Wilhelm Steinitz
Won New York, Philadelphia, Montreal 12-7 +10 -5 =4 World
Championship match
1896/97 Wilhelm Steinitz
Won Moscow 12.5-4.5 +10 -2 =5 World Championship match
1901 Dawid Janowski
Won Manchester 1.5-.5 +1 -0 =1
1903 Mikhail Chigorin
Lost Brighton 2.5-3.5 +1 -2 =3 Rice Gambit match
1907 Frank James Marshall
Won New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Baltimore,
Chicago, Memphis 11.5-3.5 +8 -0 =7 World Championship match
1908 Siegbert Tarrasch
Won Duesseldorf, Munich 10.5-5.5 +8 -3 =5 World
Championship match
1908 Abraham Speijer
Won Amsterdam 2.5-.5 +2 -0 =1
1909 Dawid Janowski
Drew Paris 2-2 +2 -2 =0 Exhibition match
1909 Dawid Janowski
Won Paris 8-2 +7 -1 =2
1910 Carl Schlechter
Drew Vienna-Berlin 5-5 +1 -1 =8 World Championship match
1910 Dawid Janowski
Won Berlin 9.5-1.5 +8 -0 =3 World Championship match
1914 Ossip Bernstein
Drew Moscow 1-1 +1 -1 =0 Exhibition match
1916 Tarrasch
Won Berlin 5.5-.5 +5 -0 =1
1921 Jose Raul Capablanca
Lost Havana 5-9 +0 -4 =10 lost World Championship
1940 Frank James Marshall
Lost New York .5-1.5 +0 -1 =1 exhibition match
++3. Max Euwe - Emanuel Lasker, Zurich 1934
Zurich 1934, Round: 1
White: Max Euwe
Black: Emanuel Lasker
Result: 0-1
ECO: D64 - Queen's Gambit Declined, Orthodox Variation, Classical Variation,
Rubinstein Variation
Notes by R.J. Macdonald
1. d4 d5
2. c4
(The Queen's Gambit.)
2. ... e6
(The Queen's Gambit Declined.)
3. Nc3 Nf6
4. Bg5 Nbd7
(The characteristic move of the Orthodox Variation.)
5. e3 c6
(The Classical Variation.)
6. Nf3 Be7
7. Qc2
(The Rubinstein Variation.)
7. ... 0-0
8. a3 Re8
9. Rc1 dxc4
10. Bxc4 Nd5
11. Bxe7 Qxe7
12. Ne4 N5f6
(12. ... N7f6 13. Ng3 b6 14. 0-0 Bb7 1/2-1/2 as in the game A. Rezasade (2301)
- M. Glienke (2254), Germany 2010.)
13. Ng3 c5
(13. ... b5 14. Ba2 b4 15. 0-0 bxa3 16. bxa3 Qxa3 17. Ra1 Qe7 18. Qxc6 Nb6 19.
Rfc1 Bb7 20. Qc5 Rac8 21. Qxe7 Rxe7 22. Rxc8+ Nxc8 23. Rc1 Ne8 24. Ne4 Bxe4 25.
Rxc8 Bxf3 26. gxf3 Kf8 27. Bb3 Rc7 28. Ra8 1/2-1/2 in 58 moves as in the game
G. Kaidanov (2629) - V. Akobian (2531), Seattle 2003.)
14. 0-0
(Alternatives include (a) 14. Bb5 cxd4 15. Nxd4 a6 16. Be2 g6 17. 0-0 e5 18.
Nb3 h5 19. Rfd1 Nf8 20. Qc5 Qxc5 21. Nxc5 Ne6 22. Nce4 Nxe4 23. Nxe4 Kf8 24.
Nd6 Rd8 25. Nc4 Rxd1+ 26. Bxd1 Bd7 27. Nxe5 Bb5 28. Bb3 Rd8 1-0 in 31 moves, as
in the game M. Chiburdanidze (2555) - H. Unrath (2060), Berlin West 1988; or
(b) 14. dxc5 Qxc5 15. 0-0 Nb6 with a slight edge for white.)
14. ... cxd4
(14. ... b6 15. dxc5 Nxc5 16. Bb5 gives white a slight advantage.)
15. Nxd4
(15. e4 b6 16. e5 Nd5 is slightly better for white.)
15. ... Nb6
(White stands slightly better.)
16. Ba2
(16. Bb3 g6 slightly favors white.)
16. ... Rb8
(16. ... Bd7 17. Qc7 gives white a slight advantage.)
17. e4
(Black has a cramped position.)
17. ... Rd8
(Black threatens to win material: Rd8xd4.)
18. Rfd1 Bd7
19. e5
(White threatens to win material: e5xf6. 19. Qd2 Ba4 20. b3 Bd7 gives white a
slight advantage.)
19. ... Ne8
(19. ... Nfd5 20. Bxd5 Rbc8 21. Qd3 exd5 22. f4 is slightly better for white.)
20. Bb1
(20. Qe4 Ba4 21. Rd2 Rbc8 22. Rxc8 Rxc8 is strong for white.)
20. ... g6
(This covers f5 while also preventing mate on h7.)
21. Qe4
(21. Ne4 Rbc8 22. Qe2 Ba4 23. Rxc8 Rxc8 gives white a slight advantage.)
21. ... Ba4
(Black threatens to win material: Ba4xd1. White stands slightly better.)
22. b3
(White threatens to win material: b3xa4. 22. Re1 Rbc8 is good for white.)
22. ... Bd7
(22. ... Bc6!? 23. Qe1 Qxa3 leads to equality.)
23. a4 Nd5
24. Bd3
(24. Qe1 f5 gives white a solid advantage.)
24. ... Rbc8
25. Bc4 Bc6
26. Nxc6
(26. Qg4 Nb6 gives white a solid advantage.)
26. ... bxc6
(White stands slightly better.)
27. Rd3
(27. Qd4 Nb6 28. Qc3 Nxc4 29. bxc4 Rxd1+ 30. Rxd1 Rd8 gives white a slight
advantage.)
27. ... Nb4
(This is a comfortable square for the black knight.)
28. Rf3
(28. Rxd8 Rxd8 29. Qe3 Ng7 gives white a slight advantage.)
28. ... Rc7
(28. ... c5 29. Qe3 Nc6 30. Rf4 leads to equality.)
29. h4
(29. Qe3 Ng7 gives white a solid advantage.)
29. ... Rcd7
(Both sides now have equal chances.)
30. h5 Qg5
(30. ... Rd1+ 31. Rxd1 Rxd1+ 32. Bf1 is slightly better for white.)
31. Re1
(31. Rf1 c5 leads to equality.)
31. ... Rd4
(The position now offers equal chances.)
32. hxg6
(32. Qb1 Rh4 offers equal chances. Weaker is 32. ... gxh5 33. Ne4 Qxe5 34. Qc1
gives white a solid advantage.)
32. ... hxg6
(32. ... Rxe4? is very tempting, but 33. gxf7+ (33. Nxe4?! Qxg6 34. Rg3 Rd4
gives white a slight edge) 33. ... Kf8 34. fxe8=Q+ Kxe8 35. Nxe4 is very strong
for white.)
33. Qe2 Rd2
(Black threatens to win material: Rd2xe2.)
34. Qf1
(34. Qe3 would keep White alive: 34. ... Qxe3 35. fxe3 leads to equality. 35.
Rfxe3? would be a mistake: 35. ... Nc2 gives black a decisive advantage.)
34. ... Nc2
(Black now has a solid advantage.)
35. Ne4 Qxe5
36. Nf6+ Qxf6
37. Rxf6 Nxf6
(Better is 37. ... Nxe1 38. Rf4 Rd1 with a very strong position for black.)
Key Move Diagram:
3r2k1/
p4p2/
2p1pnp1/
8/
P1B5/
1P6/
2nr1PP1/
4RQK1
Position after black's 37th move.
38. Rc1?
(38. Re2!? is relatively better: 38. ... Rd1 39. Rxc2 gives black a solid
advantage.)
38. ... Ne4
(Black's position is now very strong.)
39. Be2
(39. Bxe6 fxe6 40. Qc4 Nd4 gives black a very strong advantage.)
39. ... Nd4
40. Bf3 Nxf2
41. Qc4
(41. b4 would give black a decisive advantage.)
41. ... Nd3
42. Rf1
(42. Bg4 is not the saving move: 42. ... Rd5 is very strong for black.)
42. ... Ne5
43. Qb4
(43. Qc5 doesn't change anything:43. ... Nexf3+ 44. gxf3 Rd5 is decisive for
black.)
43. ... Nexf3+
(43. ... Ndxf3+?! 44. gxf3 Re2 45. a5 should win for black.)
44. gxf3 Ne2+
45. Kh2
(45. Kf2 is one last hope, but black can retain a decisive advantage after 45.
... Nf4+ 46. Qxd2 Rxd2+ 47. Ke3 Rd3+ 48. Kxf4 Rxb3 49. a5.)
45. ... Nf4+
46. Kh1 R2d4
47. Qe7
(47. Qa5 - there is nothing else anyway - 47. ... R8d5 48. Qxa7 should win for
black.)
47. ... Kg7
48. Qc7
(48. Qxa7?? - the pawn is indigestible: 48. ... Rh8+ 49. Kg1 Rd2 and black
should win easily.)
48. ... R8d5
49. Re1
(49. Kg1 doesn't change the outcome of the game: 49. ... Rg5+ 50. Kf2 c5 and
black should win easily.)
49. ... Rg5
50. Qxc6
(50. Qxa7 is refuted by the following interesting mate: 50. ... Rd2 51. Qc5
Rxc5 52. Kg1 Rg2+ 53. Kf1 Rh5 54. Rxe6 Rh1#.)
50. ... Rd8
(White resigned. 50. ... Rd8 51. Qc3+ e5 52. Qxe5+ Rxe5 53. Rxe5 Rb8 is just
too strong for black.)
0-1
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