Jose Capablanca
Jos Ra l Capablanca y Graupera was born on November 19, 1888. He was a Cuban world-class chess player in the early to mid-twentieth century. He held the title of world chess champion from 1921 to 1927.
Referred to by many chess historians as the Mozart of chess, Capablanca was a chess prodigy whose brilliance was noted at an early age. According to Capablanca, he learned the rules of the game at the age of four by watching his father play. He said he noticed his father make an illegal move with his knight, accused him of cheating, and then demonstrated what he had done. It may be unlikely that he learned all the subtleties of en passant pawn capture, castling rules, and underpromotion by observation alone, since some of the positions which demonstrate the rules are uncommon. Capablanca was taken to the Havana Chess Club when he was five, where the leading players found it impossible to beat the young boy when giving him the handicap of a queen. At the age of 13, he defeated Cuban national champion Juan Corzo by the score of 4 wins, 2 losses, and 6 draws.
In 1909, at age 20, Capablanca won a match against US champion Frank Marshall. Marshall insisted that Capablanca be allowed to play in a tournament at San Sebastin, Spain in 1911. It was one of the strongest tournaments of the time. All of the world's leading players except world champion Emmanuel Lasker were in attendance. At the beginning of the tournament Ossip Bernstein and Aaron Nimzowitsch objected to Capablanca's presence because he had not won a major tournament. But after Capablanca won his first round game against Bernstein, with an effort which was to win the tournament's brilliancy prize, Bernstein quickly acknowleged Capablanca's talent and said that he wouldn't be surprised if Capablanca won the tournament. Nimzowitsch took offense when Capablanca made a comment while watching one of his blitz games, and remarked that unproven players should hold their tongue in the presence of their betters. Capablanca quickly challenged Nimzowitsch to a series of fast games, which he won easily.
In 1911, Capablanca challenged Emanuel Lasker for the world championship. Lasker accepted his challenge but proposed seventeen conditions for the match. Capablanca disapproved of some of the conditions and the match did not take place.
In 1913, Capablanca played in his home town of Havana and came second to Frank Marshall, and lost one of their individual games after having a much better position. Reuben Fine claimed that Capablanca had the mayor clear all the spectators so they wouldn't see him resign, and this story has uncritically circulated in books and around the Internet. However, Winter's book below (pp. 47-48) documents that Fine's story has no basis whatever. Instead, there were 600 spectators present, who naturally favored their native hero, but sportingly gave Marshall "thunderous applause". Marshall's own notes corroborated this-when he heard the roar, he thought that the crowd was going to kill him, and he asked for security escort "and quickly rushed over to my hotel. Afterwards I was told they were cheering for me."
In September 1913, Capablanca secured a job in the Cuban Foreign Office. He appears not to have had any specific duties other than playing chess, but what he had he was reported to have carried out conscientiously. For many years, he was the most famous Cuban alive.
In 1920, Lasker saw that Capablanca was becoming too strong, and resigned the title to him, saying, "You have earned the title not by the formality of a challenge, but by your brilliant mastery." Capablanca wanted to win it in a match, but Lasker insisted that he was now the challenger. They played a match in Havana in 1921, and Capablanca defeated Lasker +4 -0 =10. This feat of winning the world title without losing a game to the incumbent went unequalled for almost eight decades, until Vladimir Kramnik's win over Garry Kasparov +2 -0 =13 in 2000.
The new world champion, Capablanca dominated the field at London, 1922. There was an increasing number of strong chess players and it was felt that the world champion should not be able to evade challenges to his title, as had been done in the past. At this tournament, some of the leading players of the time including Alexander Alekhine, Efim Bogoljubov, Geza Maroczy, Richard R ti, Akiba Rubinstein, Ksawery Tartakower and Milan Vidmar, met to discuss rules for the conduct of future world championships. Amongst other things, one of the conditions proposed by Capablanca was that the challenger would have to raise at least ten thousand dollars for the prize money.
In 1927, he lost his world champion title to Alekhine +6 -3 =25. Alekhine refused to play a return match, even though doing so had been a pre-condition of the match. Despite the collapse of the financial markets in 1929, Alekhine continued to insist on the London conditions, with a $10,000 purse to be secured by the challenger. Capablanca found it difficult to satisfy this condition. Instead, Alekhine played two matches against Efim Bogoljubov, a fine player, but one who posed no great threat in a long match. (Capablanca had a 5-0 lifetime record against him). Throughout his tenure as champion, Alekhine refused to play in the same tournaments as Capablanca.
In 1931 Capablanca defeated the fine Dutch player Max Euwe +2 -0 =8. Then he withdrew from serious chess, and played only less serious games at the Manhattan Chess Club and simultaneous displays. Reuben Fine recalls that in this period he could fight on almost level terms with Alekhine at blitz chess, but that Capablanca beat him "mercilessly" the few times they played.
In 1934, Capablanca resumed serious play. He had begun dating Olga Chagodayev, whom he married in 1938, and she inspired him to play again. In 1935, Alekhine, plagued by problems with alcohol, lost his title to Euwe. Capablanca had renewed hopes of regaining his title, and he won Moscow 1936, ahead of Botvinnik and Lasker. Then he tied with Botvinnik in the super-tournament of Nottingham 1936, ahead of Euwe, Lasker, Alekhine, and the leading young players Reuben Fine, Samuel Reshevsky and Salo Flohr.
He suffered a small stroke during the AVRO tournament of 1938, and had the worst result of his career, 7th out of 8. But even at this stage of his career he was capable of producing strong results. In the 1939 Chess Olympiad in Buenos Aires, he made the best score on top board for Cuba, ahead of Alekhine and Paul Keres. On 7 March 1942, he was happily kibitzing a skittles game at Manhattan Chess Club in New York when he collapsed from a stroke. He was taken to Mount Sinai hospital, where he died the next morning.
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