Lasker is the guy Capablanca said was a natural genius and never adhered to a style that could be classified in a definitive way.
Alekhine called Lasker his teacher and said that without Lasker he could not have become the player he did.
Tal called him the greatest champion and an amazing tactician who won games that were apparently quite hopeless. Ringing endorsements from some of the best players who ever lived, yet I never cottoned to his play.
Andrew Soltis wrote a book, Why Lasker Matters. One reviewer wrote, “Soltis is a good annotator, an amicable and occasionally humorous companion. His analyses seem sound and he gives good, perspicacious explanations of the play, making good use of contemporaneous sources. Along the way he gives a summation and portrait of Lasker as player and thinker.”
The late James R. Schroeder was of a different opinion; he wrote, “...this book is worthless...Instead of analyzing the games correctly, Soltis puts in more than 100 pages of BAD analysis and then tries to correct it. That is insane!...There are so many mistakes I could write several pages of corrections. Not worth it.”
I am not sure of the source of Schroeder’s information, but he claims Lasker “was precocious but what we call a “smart-ass”, insufferably conceited and sarcastic. His sarcasm was based upon ignorance, but he was a small child, which is probably why no one hit him. His parents got rid of him by sending him to live with his brother Berthold who was a medical student and a manager of a tea room, where people played cards and board games.”
At the age of 12 Lasker showed unusual ability in math and was sent to school in Berlin under the care of his elder brother Berthold, a medical student and, also, a strong player. Later he studied mathematics and philosophy at the universities in Berlin, Gottingen and Heidelberg. Schroeder also said of Lasker that he was inordinately lazy, he tried to emulate Paul Morphy and had a straight-forward, classical style and was an excellent endgame player. Considering Lasker's accomplishments, inordinately lazy does not seem appropriate!
Emanuel Lasker (December 24, 1868 – January 11, 1941) was more than a chess player; he was also a mathematician and a philosopher.
His contemporaries used to say that Lasker used a psychological approach to the game, and that he sometimes deliberately played inferior moves to confuse opponents and that description persists even today. That wasn’t true, they just didn’t understand his play which was ahead of its time. Playing over his games gave me a new appreciation for them.
Lasker also played and wrote about bridge and Go and his own invention of a game called Lasca, a game derived from checkers. He also published books on the mathematical analysis of card games and algebra, philosophy and drama.
After Tarrasch refused Lasker’s challenge for a friendly match, Lasker journeyed to the US in 1894 to challenge defending champion Wilhelm Steinitz. By the way, Schroeder was upset at using the name Wilhelm because in the 1880s Steinitz had become a US citizen and changed his name to William.
The winner of the match was to be the first to win 10 games, draws not counting. The time control was 15 moves per hour. The stakes were $2,000 per side. The match was to be played in New York, Philadelphia and Montreal.
The match began in New York on March 15, 1894, and was fairly even with two victories to each player in the first six games. However, Lasker then won five consecutive games in Philadelphia after he recognized Steinitz couldn’t play Queenless middlegames.
In the 19th game, Lasker achieved his 10th win, thereby becoming the 2nd World Chess Champion. In November of 1896 they played a return match in Moscow which Lasker won with a score of 10 to 2 with 5 draws. Four weeks later, Steinitz's mind went,and he was sent to a psychiatric clinic and was soon declared insane.
The seventh from their first match was one of three Schroeder called the most important games Lasker ever played. The other two were the 8th game and his game against Marco at Hastings 1895.
In his book, Soltis left out the 7th game causing one person to comment, “Maybe he thought it would be too much work” to annotate it. The book by Fine and Reinfeld do not contain the 7th or 8th games. They give three games: game 9 calling it the best game of the match, game 10 (A well played game by Lasker, unfortunately marred by Steinitz’ feeble defense.) and game 11 (one of Lasker’s best games of the match).
Game 11 was interesting because of the controversy over black’s 31st move; was it 31...b6 or 31...g6? According to a post in Chessgames.com 31...b6 was given by German sources and 31...g6 by BCM and Chess Monthly.
Bernard Cafferty, preparing a history article for BCM, decided that 30...g6 was better and therefore more likely and the New Orleans Times Democrat had an article by Lasker in which he gave 31...g6 and he should know.
Fine and Horowitz give 31...b6 with the comment, "If black plays to win the B, white’s K has time to make a decisive inroad on the Q-side.” They also give some analysis on on 31...g6 without comment. In his book Soltis said it didn’t matter which move was played because black is lost anyway. I am going with 31...g6.
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For a long time Mr. Schroeder was collecting Lasker's games for his own book, and became very upset when someone beat him to the press. I purchased his collection (and a few other things) and was quite taken aback to find he furnished only the names of the players and the game score without date or place. Maybe he was saving that information for his introduction to his analysis.
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