72 Facts About Emanuel Lasker

Emanuel Lasker was the second World Chess Champion, holding the title for 27 years, from 1894 to 1921, the longest reign of any officially recognised World Chess Champion winning 6 World Chess Championships.

Emanuel Lasker's 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.

Emanuel Lasker knew contemporary analyses of openings well but disagreed with many of them.

Emanuel Lasker published chess magazines and five chess books, but later players and commentators found it difficult to draw lessons from his methods.

Emanuel Lasker was a first-class contract bridge player and wrote about bridge, Go, and his own invention, Lasca.

Emanuel Lasker was a research mathematician who was known for his contributions to commutative algebra, which included proving the primary decomposition of the ideals of polynomial rings.

Emanuel Lasker was born on December 24,1868, at Berlinchen in Neumark, the son of a Jewish cantor.

Emanuel Lasker won both of his final games, while von Feierfeil lost in the penultimate round and drew in the last round.

Emanuel Lasker finished second in an international tournament at Amsterdam, ahead of Mason and Gunsberg.

In 1892 Emanuel Lasker founded the first of his chess magazines, The London Chess Fortnightly, which was published from August 15,1892, to July 30,1893.

Shortly after its last issue, Emanuel Lasker traveled to the US, where he spent the next two years.

Emanuel Lasker challenged Siegbert Tarrasch, who had won three consecutive strong international tournaments, to a match.

Steinitz had previously declared he would win without doubt, so it came as a shock when Emanuel Lasker won the first game.

However, Emanuel Lasker won all the games from the seventh to the eleventh, and Steinitz asked for a week's rest.

Emanuel Lasker struck back in the 15th and 16th, and Steinitz did not compensate for his losses in the middle of the match.

Hence Emanuel Lasker won convincingly with ten wins, five losses, and four draws.

Emanuel Lasker answered these criticisms by creating an even more impressive playing record.

Emanuel Lasker then played Tarrasch in the World Chess Championship 1908, first at Dusseldorf then at Munich.

Emanuel 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 in which Emanuel Lasker was a pawn down, with a and.

In 1909 Emanuel Lasker drew a short match against Dawid Janowski, an all-out attacking Polish expatriate.

Understanding Janowski's style, Emanuel Lasker chose to defend solidly so that Janowski unleashed his attacks too soon and left himself vulnerable.

At the beginning, Emanuel Lasker tried to attack but Schlechter had no difficulty defending, so that the first four games finished in draws.

Hence the match was a draw and Emanuel Lasker remained World Champion.

In 1911 Emanuel Lasker received a challenge for a world title match against the rising star Jose Raul Capablanca.

Emanuel 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.

Emanuel Lasker took offence at the terms in which Capablanca criticized the two-game lead condition and broke off negotiations, and until 1914 Emanuel Lasker and Capablanca were not on speaking terms.

Late in 1912 Emanuel 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 Emanuel Lasker's and a little ahead of Capablanca's.

Emanuel Lasker convincingly won a non-title match against Tarrasch in 1916.

Emanuel Lasker's parents recognized his intellectual talents, especially for mathematics, and sent the adolescent Emanuel to study in Berlin.

Emanuel Lasker gained his abitur at Landsberg an der Warthe, now a Polish town named Gorzow Wielkopolski but then part of Prussia.

Emanuel Lasker then studied mathematics and philosophy at the universities in Berlin, Gottingen and Heidelberg.

Emanuel Lasker was awarded a doctorate in mathematics in 1902.

Emanuel Lasker held short-term positions as a mathematics lecturer at Tulane University in New Orleans and Victoria University in Manchester.

In 1906 Emanuel Lasker published a booklet titled Kampf, in which he attempted to create a general theory of all competitive activities, including chess, business and war.

Emanuel Lasker produced two other books which are generally categorized as philosophy, Das Begreifen der Welt and Die Philosophie des Unvollendbar.

In 1903, Emanuel 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.

Three years later Emanuel Lasker became secretary of the Rice Gambit Association, founded by Rice in order to promote the Rice Gambit, and in 1907 Emanuel Lasker quoted with approval Rice's views on the convergence of chess and military strategy.

In November 1904, Emanuel Lasker founded Emanuel Lasker's Chess Magazine, which ran until 1909.

Emanuel Lasker became interested in the strategy game Go after being introduced to it by his namesake Edward Lasker, probably in 1907 or 1908.

Emanuel Lasker kept his interest in Go for the rest of his life, becoming one of the strongest players in Germany and Europe and contributing occasionally to the magazine Deutsche Go-Zeitung.

At the age of 42, in July 1911, Emanuel Lasker married Martha Cohn, a rich widow who was a year older than Emanuel Lasker and already a grandmother.

Emanuel 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.

When Emanuel 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.

Emanuel Lasker stated that, if he beat Capablanca, he would resign the title so that younger masters could compete for it.

The eleventh and fourteenth games were won by Capablanca, and Emanuel Lasker resigned the match.

Reuben Fine and Harry Golombek attributed this to Emanuel Lasker's being in mysteriously poor form.

Emanuel Lasker was in his early 50s when he lost the world championship to Capablanca, and he retired from serious match play afterwards; his only other match was a short exhibition against Frank James Marshall in 1940, which was never completed due to Emanuel Lasker's illness and subsequent death a few months after it started.

Emanuel Lasker was so distracted by this news that he lost badly to Carlos Torre the same day.

In 1926, Emanuel Lasker wrote Lehrbuch des Schachspiels, which he re-wrote in English in 1927 as Emanuel Lasker's Manual of Chess.

Emanuel Lasker wrote books on other games of mental skill: Encyclopedia of Games and Das verstandige Kartenspiel, both of which posed a problem in the mathematical analysis of card games; Brettspiele der Volker, which includes 30 pages about Go and a section about a game he had invented in 1911, Lasca.

In 1930, Emanuel Lasker was a special correspondent for Dutch and German newspapers reporting on the Culbertson-Buller bridge match during which he became a registered teacher of the Culbertson system.

Emanuel Lasker became an expert bridge player, representing Germany at international events in the early 1930s, and wrote Das Bridgespiel in 1931.

Emanuel Lasker 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.

Emanuel Lasker returned to competitive chess to make some money, finishing fifth in Zurich 1934 and third in Moscow 1935, sixth in Moscow 1936 and equal seventh in Nottingham 1936.

Emanuel 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.

Emanuel Lasker himself denied the claim that he deliberately played bad moves, and most modern writers agree.

Max Euwe opined that the real reason behind Emanuel Lasker's success was his "exceptional defensive technique" and that "almost all there is to say about defensive chess can be demonstrated by examples from the games of Steinitz and Emanuel Lasker", the former exemplifying passive defence and the latter an active defence.

The famous win against Jose Raul Capablanca at St Petersburg in 1914, which Emanuel Lasker needed in order to retain any chance of catching up with Capablanca, is sometimes offered as evidence of his "psychological" approach.

Fine reckoned Emanuel Lasker paid little attention to the openings, but Capablanca thought Emanuel Lasker knew the openings very well but disagreed with a lot of contemporary opening analysis.

In fact before the 1894 world title match, Emanuel Lasker studied the openings thoroughly, especially Steinitz's favorite lines.

Emanuel Lasker played primarily e4 openings, particularly the Ruy Lopez.

Capablanca wrote that Emanuel 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.

Emanuel Lasker followed Steinitz's principles, and both demonstrated a completely different chess paradigm than the "romantic" mentality before them.

Only in 1936, when Emanuel Lasker was 67, did Capablanca finish ahead of him.

Emanuel Lasker concluded that Lasker was the joint second strongest player of those surveyed.

Emanuel Lasker founded no school of players who played in a similar style.

Emanuel Lasker 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.

Copyright in chess games had been contentious at least as far back as the mid-1840s, and Steinitz and Emanuel Lasker vigorously asserted that players should own the copyright and wrote copyright clauses into their match contracts.

Some controversial conditions that Emanuel Lasker insisted on for championship matches led Capablanca to attempt twice to publish rules for such matches, to which other top players readily agreed.

Emanuel Lasker 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.

Emanuel Lasker was undoubtedly one of the most interesting people I came to know in my later years.