Emanuel Lasker

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Emanuel Lasker

Full name Emanuel Lasker
Country Flag of Germany Germany
Born December 24, 1868
Berlinchen, Prussia (now Barlinek, Poland)
Died January 11, 1941 (aged 72)
New York City, United States
Title Grandmaster
World Champion 1894-1921
This article uses algebraic notation to describe chess moves.

Emanuel Lasker (December 24, 1868 – January 11, 1941) was a German born chess grandmaster, mathematician, and philosopher, and was World Chess Champion for 27 years.

Contents

[edit] Chess champion

Lasker was born at Berlinchen in Brandenburg (now Barlinek in Poland).

In 1894 he became the second World Chess Champion by defeating Steinitz with ten wins, four draws and five losses. He maintained this title for 27 years, the longest tenure of any officially recognized World Champion of chess.

Lasker defended his title successfully in a rematch against Steinitz in 1896, then virtually retired for seven years to concentrate on his mathematics studies.[1]

He returned to regular play in 1904, and successfully defended his title against Frank Marshall (1907, +8-0=7), Siegbert Tarrasch (1908, +8-3=5), Carl Schlechter (1910, +1-1=8), and David Janowski (1910, +8-0=3).

His great tournament wins include London 1899 (4½ points ahead of his nearest competitor), St Petersburg (1896 and 1914), and New York 1924). Apart from losing his title to Capablanca, the most serious "setbacks" of Lasker's career were third place at Hastings 1895, tie for second at Cambridge Springs 1904, tie for first at St Petersburg 1909 and a drawn World Championship match against Schlechter (1910).[2]

In 1921, he lost the title to Capablanca. Negotiations had begun as early as 1912,[3] but had been interrupted by World War I. In 1920 Lasker offered to resign his title to Capablanca, but Capablanca wanted to beat Lasker in a match. Lasker had lost all of his savings in the war, which may at least partially explain his poor match showing, given that he played excellent chess for many years afterwards.[4] Lasker lost with the score of 5 points out of 14 without scoring a single win.[5]

In 1933, the Jewish Lasker and his wife Martha Kohn had to leave Germany because of the Nazis. They went to England and, after a subsequent short stay (1935-1937) in the USSR (where Lasker renounced his German citizenship and received Soviet citizenship)[6], they settled in New York, where he resided for the rest of his life.

Lasker is often said to have used 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 Réti even speculated that Lasker would sometimes knowingly choose inferior moves if he knew they would make his opponent uncomfortable. However Lasker himself denied this, and most modern writers agree. 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.[7] Vladimir Kramnik says, "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 codifed by Siegbert Tarrasch.[8]

The famous last round win against Capablanca (St. Petersburg, 1914), which Lasker needed to win the tournament, is sometimes offered as evidence of his "psychological" style, but Kramnik argues that his play in this game demonstrated deep positional understanding, rather than psychology.[8] Nevertheless, that game can be seen as a microcosm of Lasker's style; he invested little study in the opening, was tremendously resourceful in the middlegame and played the endgame at the highest level. Indeed, even when Lasker was in his late 60s, Capablanca considered him the most dangerous player around in any single game.

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. Some opening variations are named after him, for example Lasker's Defense (1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 Be7 5.e3 O-O 6.Nf3 h6 7.Bh4 Ne4) to the Queen's Gambit.[9]

In 1895, he introduced a line that effectively ended the popular Evans Gambit in tournament play (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.b4 Bxb4 5.c3 Ba5 6.d4 d6 7.0-0 Bb6 8.dxe5 dxe5 9.Qxd8+ Nxd8 10.Nxe5 Be6). Lasker's line curbs White's aggressive intentions and, according to Reuben Fine, the resulting simplified position "is psychologically depressing for the gambit player" (and objectively good for Black, who gets a slight endgame advantage).[9]

Emanuel Lasker and his brother, 1907
Emanuel Lasker and his brother, 1907

[edit] Mathematician

Lasker was also a distinguished mathematician. He performed his doctoral studies at Erlangen from 1900 to 1902 under David Hilbert. His doctoral thesis, Über Reihen auf der Convergenzgrenze, was published in Philosophical Transactions in 1901. "He was a respected professor of mathematics at Heidelberg University in Germany for many years. Lasker was determined not to devote all of his time to chess."[10]

Lasker introduced the concept of a primary ideal, which extends the notion of a power of a prime number to algebraic geometry. He is most famous for his 1905 paper Zur Theorie der Moduln und Ideale, which appeared in Mathematische Annalen. In this paper, he established what is now known as the Lasker-Noether theorem for the special case of ideals in polynomial rings.

[edit] Other facets of his life

He was also a philosopher, and a good friend of Albert Einstein. Later in life he became an ardent humanitarian, and wrote passionately about the need for inspiring and structured education for the stabilization and security of mankind. He also took up bridge and became a master at it, in addition to studying Go.

He invented Lasca, a draughts-like game, where instead of removing captured pieces from the board, they are stacked underneath the capturer.

Poetess Else Lasker-Schüler was his sister-in-law.

Edward Lasker, the American International Master, engineer, and author, claimed that he was related to Emanuel Lasker. They played together in the great 1924 New York tournament.

[edit] Notable chess games

[edit] Publications

[edit] Quotations

  • "The acquisition of harmonious education is comparable to the production and the elevation of an organism harmoniously built. The one is fed by blood, the other one by the spirit; but Life, equally mysterious, creative, powerful, flows through either." — from Manual of Chess
  • "Lies and hypocrisy do not survive for long on the chessboard. The creative combination lies bare the presumption of a lie, while the merciless fact, culminating in a checkmate, contradicts the hypocrite." — from Manual of Chess


[edit] References

  1. ^ "From Morphy to Fischer" (Israel Horowitz, Batsford, 1973), p.54
  2. ^ Fine, R. (1952). The World's Great Chess Games. Andre Deutsch (now as paperback from Dover). 
  3. ^ "From Morphy to Fischer" (Israel Horowitz, Batsford, 1973), p.68-70
  4. ^ The Immortal Games of Capablanca, by Fred Reinfeld, Dover Publishing, New York 1944, introduction by Robert Byrne.
  5. ^ Winter, E.. How Capablanca Became World Champion. Edward Winter.
  6. ^ Litmanowicz, Władysław & Giżycki, Jerzy (1986, 1987). Szachy od A do Z. Wydawnictwo Sport i Turystyka Warszawa. ISBN 83-217-2481-7 (1. A-M), ISBN 83-217-2745-x (2. N-Z). 
  7. ^ Soltis, A. (2005). Why Lasker Matters. Batsford.  The URL is a review by John L. Watson
  8. ^ a b Kramnik, V.. Kramnik Interview: From Steinitz to Kasparov. Vladmir Kramnik.
  9. ^ a b Fine, R. (1948). The Ideas behind the Chess Openings". Bell. 
  10. ^ Great Chess Upsets, by Samuel Reshevsky, Arco Publishing, New York 1976, p. 36.
  11. ^ Bill Wall. Dr. Emanuel Lasker (1868-1941). Retrieved on 2007-08-03.

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Preceded by
Wilhelm Steinitz		 World Chess Champion
1894–1921		 Succeeded by
José Raúl Capablanca
v • d • e
World Chess Champions
Undisputed Steinitz · Lasker · Capablanca · Alekhine · Euwe · Botvinnik · Smyslov · Tal · Petrosian · Spassky · Fischer · Karpov · Kasparov · Kramnik · Anand
1886–1946 Steinitz · Lasker · Capablanca · Alekhine · Euwe
FIDE 1946–1993 Botvinnik · Smyslov · Tal · Petrosian · Spassky · Fischer · Karpov · Kasparov
FIDE 1993–2006 Karpov · Khalifman · Anand · Ponomariov · Kasimdzhanov · Topalov
Classical 1993–2006 Kasparov · Kramnik
FIDE Unified 2006- Kramnik · Anand
Persondata
NAME Lasker, Emanuel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lasker, Emanuel; Lasker, Emanuel
SHORT DESCRIPTION German chess World Chess Champion and grandmaster, mathematician, and philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Barlinek, Poland
DATE OF DEATH January 11, 1941
PLACE OF DEATH New York City, United States
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuel_Lasker"
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