Lasker did not keep regular hours and did not carry a watch, was rarely in bed before 3 a.m., ate when he was hungry and slept when he was tired. He was interested in everything, loved to argue and even argued with Albert Einstein about relativity.
The Sunday, May 16, 1926 edition of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle carried an article titled: World-Famous Champion Sees Possibilities of Applying Lessons of Ancient Game to Solution of Modern Political, Business and Social Problems.
For Lasker chess was not only a game but a type and symbol of human relationships. He saw chess as more than a game and believed businessmen, bankers, lawyers, rulers of nations and ambassadors of the world would be greatly helped by a study and knowledge of chess.
Lasker stated that if he ever got to the point financially where he could do what he pleased, he would found a School of Chess Strategy in Practical Problems with the purpose of showing how chess could benefit the social and business life of the world.
There are three main “departments”, as he called them, of chess: openings, problems and principles and these departments have counterparts in practical life. Wherever there is a contest or negotiation you have them. Of course, chess misses the element of chance, which enters into a large part of human relations. But, be believed the study of chess strategy would throw much light on human relations and would be of great help.
During the interview in the Long Island home of a friend, while meditatively smoking a cigar, Lasker talked about chess, mathematics, philosophy, literature and the ways of the world.
He said that what drew him to chess was that he was by nature a fighter and from the beginning he was interested in a fight and any contest or struggle had a fascination for him. He explained that chess is a contest in which the opponents start on even terms and where the fighting is all above board.
After thinking a minute, he added that there are, of course, other types of contests and games and cards belong to the type in which the play is not always above board.
Speaking of card games, some day he planned to make a study of poker and bridge to discover why Americans play poker so extensively and Germans play bridge so badly. "These are subjects," he said, "which should be studied...for bridge and chess...are not insignificant matters which take up leisure time and have no other use."
Lasker was asked if there were any truth in the belief that chess, because of the concentrated thinking it presumably requires, had ever been responsible for driving someone insane. He didn’t believe there had been a single instance in the whole history of chess—and he had made it his business to become acquainted with the lives of all the great chess players—of any one, amateur or professional, losing his mind by reason of playing the game. He said, "There are numerous causes that may drive a man to insanity, but they are hardly mental. If one studies too deeply on mystical matters, derangement of mind may occur, but he didn’t believe thinking on rational matters could hurt the mind.
As for teaching chess, he said prodigies are not youngsters with a peculiar mind particularly fitted to deal with chess problems. He said, "Take any boy fairly intelligent and fairly healthy and you can make a chess prodigy of him—or any other sort of prodigy. If you can...rivet his mind on any field—chess or Latin, or memorizing the Bible or athletics—you will make him proficient in that field.”
He didn’t recommend it though because he believed a young person should be educated in a large number of fields rather than highly trained in just one. He stated, "If a boy plays chess constantly there will come a time when he will be what we call a prodigy...just as by listening to his mother tongue he finds himself suddenly able to speak it. Such an accomplishment is a function of mental growth, which is...greatest in the years of youth...The danger of a boy's concentrating on chess is that it consumes so much of his attention...as to leave other interests stunted.”
Of all the great masters whom Lasker encountered he considered Capablanca his most strongest opponent. He said, "If you ask me wherein his superiority consists, I can only say that the reasons why I consider him superior may be summed up in the words—the power of his moves and the objectivity of his thinking. If, then, you ask me to go behind that, I am not certain I can do so without going into elaborate details, which would mean the replaying of a large number of games.”
"He is industrious, he applies himself, he studies the game and in every case knows what he is doing. But when I say power of his moves I do not mean anything vague or theoretical. The power is there.”
For anybody that’s interested in reading it, Lasker’s 97-page book, Struggle, can be downloaded in pdf format HERE. From the Preface…This book, though it deals with laws governing struggles in general, is the outcome of reflections upon the meaning of the approved principles of the struggle on even terms between two brains called chess...
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