Emanuel Lasker
Emanuel Lasker was born on December 24, 1868 at Berlinchen in Brandenburg, Germany (now Barlinek in Poland). His great tournament wins include London 1899, St. Petersburg 1896 and 1914, and New York 1924.
In 1894, Lasker became the 2nd World Chess Champion by beating Steinitz with 10 wins, 5 losses, and 4 draws. He kept this title for 27 years. This is the longest unbroken tenure of any officially recognized World Champion of chess. In 1921, Capablanca took the title from him. He had already offered to resign to him a year before, but Capablanca wanted to beat Lasker in a match. In 1933, the Jewish Lasker and his wife had to leave Germany because of the Nazis. They went to England, and after a short stay in the USSR, they settled in New York.
Lasker is noted for his "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 even speculated that Lasker would sometimes knowingly choose inferior moves if he knew they would make his opponent uncomfortable, although Lasker himself denied this. But, for example, in one famous game against Capablanca (St. Petersburg 1914) which he needed to win at all costs, Lasker chose an opening that is considered to be relatively harmless -- but only if the opponent is prepared to mix things up in his own turn. Capablanca, inclined by the tournament situation to play it safe, failed to take active measures and so justified Lasker's strategy. He won the game.
Lasker has some opening variations named after him. For example the Lasker's Defense to the Queen's Gambit (1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 Be7 5.e3 O-O 6.Nf3 h6 7.Bh4 Ne4). In 1895, he introduced a line that 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). This line curbs White's agressive intentions, and according to Reuben Fine, the resulting simplified position "is psychologically depressing for the gambit player."
Lasker was also a prominent mathematician. From 1900 to 1902, he performed his doctoral studies at Erlangen under David Hilbert. ber Reihen auf der Convergenzgrenze, his doctoral thesis, was published in Philosophical Transactions in 1901. He introduced the concept of a primary ideal. This concept 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 that 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.
Lasker was also a philosopher and a good friend of Albert Einstein. During his later years, he became an avid humanitarian. He wrote passionately about the need for inspiring and structured education for the stabilization and security of mankind. On January 11, 1941, Lasker died in Manhattan, New York.
Download 165 chess games by Emanuel Lasker
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