Emanuel Lasker(Einstein: He was one of the smartest people I have ever met.)
Early years 1868–1894
Lasker as a young man
Emanuel Lasker was born on December 24, 1868, at Berlinchen in Neumark (now Barlinek in Poland), the son of a Jewish cantor. At the age of eleven he was sent to study mathematics in Berlin, where he lived with his brother Berthold, eight years his senior, who taught him how to play chess. Berthold was among the world's top ten players in the early 1890s. To supplement their income, Emanuel Lasker played chess and card games for small stakes, especially at the Café Kaiserhof.
Lasker won the Café Kaiserhof's annual Winter tournament 1888/89 and the Hauptturnier A ("second division" tournament) at the sixth DSB Congress (German Chess Federation's congress), held in Breslau. Winning the Hauptturnier earned Lasker the title of "master". The candidates were divided into two groups of ten. The top four in each group competed in a final. Lasker won his section, with 2½ points more than his nearest rival. However, scores were reset to 0 for the final. With two rounds to go, Lasker trailed the leader, Viennese amateur von Feierfeil, by 1½ points. Lasker won both of his final games, while von Feierfeil lost in the penultimate round (being mated in 121 moves after the position was reconstructed incorrectly following an adjournment) and drew in the last round. The two players were now tied. Lasker won a playoff and garnered the master title. This enabled him to play in master-level tournaments and thus launched his chess career.
Lasker finished second in an international tournament at Amsterdam, ahead of Mason and Gunsberg. In spring 1892, he won two tournaments in London, the second and stronger of these without losing a game. At New York City in 1893, he won all thirteen games, one of the few times in chess history that a player has achieved a perfect score in a significant tournament.
The players and tournament officials at the New York 1893 tournament
His record in matches was equally impressive: At Berlin in 1890 he drew a short playoff match against his brother Berthold and won all his other matches from 1889 to 1893, mostly against top-class opponents: Curt von Bardeleben (1889), Jacques Mieses (1889), Henry Edward Bird (1890), Berthold Englisch (1890), Joseph Henry Blackburne (1892), Jackson Showalter (1892–93) and Celso Golmayo Zúpide (1893). Chessmetrics calculates that Emanuel Lasker became the world's strongest player in mid 1890, and that he was in the top ten from the very beginning of his recorded career in 1889.
In 1892 Lasker founded the first of his chess magazines, The London Chess Fortnightly, which was published from August 15, 1892, to July 30, 1893. In the second quarter of 1893, there was a gap of ten weeks between issues, allegedly because of problems with the printer. Shortly after its last issue, Lasker traveled to the US, where he spent the next two years.
Lasker challenged Siegbert Tarrasch, who had won three consecutive strong international tournaments (Breslau 1889, Manchester 1890, and Dresden 1892), to a match. Tarrasch haughtily declined, stating that Lasker should first prove his mettle by attempting to win one or two major international events.(I think this is very beatiful game https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1109094)
