Emanuel Lasker was the second world chess champion and held the title from 1894, when he defeated Wilhelm Steinitz, until 1921, when he lost it to José Raúl Capablanca. The twenty-seven-year reign remains the longest in the history of the world championship and a record that no modern title cycle can plausibly match. He was also a mathematician of professional standing, a philosopher with published work, and an accomplished bridge and Go player.
His chess style was the first to be widely described as psychological. Lasker did not always play the objectively strongest move; he played the move he judged most uncomfortable for the opponent in front of him. The approach baffled contemporaries who had been raised on Steinitz’s positional doctrine of the single correct plan, and it produced a series of championship and tournament victories that exceeded what his pure technical ability alone would predict. He was a master of the resilient defence and the difficult endgame in particular.
Lasker fled Nazi Germany in 1933 after the regime confiscated his property and pension. He spent his final years in the United States, where he died in New York in 1941. He played his last serious chess in 1936, when he was sixty-eight and finished sixth at the Moscow international tournament — ahead of seven players younger than himself by two and three decades. His writings on chess and philosophy remain in print.
Career data
Emanuel Lasker was born in 1868, in Berlinchen, Province of Brandenburg, Prussia, and died in 1941. They earned the Grandmaster title in 1950. They represent the Deutscher Schachbund. Their peak FIDE rating was 2720, reached in 1894. Emanuel Lasker held the world championship title in 1894–1921. Their playing style is characterised as: Psychological · resilient defender · endgame master. They competed for Germany at the international level throughout their career. This biography summarises the publicly recorded career data; for game records and tournament results, follow the related-content links elsewhere on this page.
Notable games & rivals
Annotated games on Caissly involving Emanuel Lasker:
Notable rivals: José Raúl Capablanca, Alexander Alekhine.