Hall of Fame #34: Siegbert Tarrasch
Tarrasch's 'dogmas' are not eternal truisms, but merely instructional material presented in an accessible and witty form, those necessary rudiments from which one can begin to grasp the secrets of chess. – Garry Kasparov Chess Quotes - Theory
[A note for my regular readers: The intro has not changed (except for a new image and accompanying caption). Feel free to jump to the Table of Contents or even to the Biography.]
[A note for my new readers: I believe it is useful to read the full introduction your first time. Cheers!]
This blog is a celebration that leverages an outstanding concept of GMs Nielsen and Gustafsson (both of whom are also popular chessable.com authors) but offers my unique take. The two GMs produced videos and multiple lessons regarding their top 50 chess players of all time. Although I provide a link to their work below, my focus is different, though I freely accept their rankings.
How does my work differ? Well, first off, I'm not a titled player. Second, I wrote brief biographies for each player and offer limited discussion and pictures of some of their works (if they wrote). Third, if they were eminently quotable, I'll throw in a few of those! I may have found occasion to add quotes from other famous (or even unknown) chess names regarding the Hall of Famer. Fourth, I'll toss in the occasional caricature😏.
Fifth, and most difficult, I will include at least two games analyzed by the individual, if such games exist. After all, the greatest of the great should be able to explain what they were thinking during a game, shouldn't they? (Spoiler alert: perhaps, except when there is no evidence that they ever had analyses published. Also, many of them analyzed games, but the ones available to me only offer some alternative lines, with symbolic indications but no textual explanations.)
Plus, I attempt to provide links to other relevant materials regarding these grandmasters of the game.
We've reached #34!
Back to TopTable of Contents
#34 chess.com Hall of Fame: Siegbert Tarrasch The official chess.com site. Less interesting, imo.
Chess QuoteMasters Hall of Fame #3: Siegbert Tarrasch
Siegbert Tarrasch (5 March 1862 – 17 February 1934) was a German master, M.D., and one of the most influential theoreticians of the late 19th and early 20th century. He was known in Germany as Praeceptor Germaniae for his efforts to make chess concepts accessible to the average player. ChessMetrics estimates his peak rating at 2824 in June 1895 and lists him at #2 globally for 111 different months between October 1890 and November 1906.
However, he was no match for Lasker whose scores against top competition were better than Tarrasch could achieve. When matched in the 1908 World CC, Lasker won with 8W-5D-3L (see @kahns A Century of Chess: Lasker-Tarrasch 1908). Tarrasch lost even more resoundingly in a 1916 match with Lasker winning five games and only one draw between them.
Let's take a look at how he fared against top competitors over a long career. Emanuel Lasker clearly had Tarrasch's number. Tarrasch suffered even more horribly against Alekhine. That was no surprise given Alekhine was reaching his prime while Tarrasch was holding on as best he could. Tarrasch's results against Steinitz were from a limited number of games, and suggest Steinitz was past his prime. In the composite (bottom right corner of the table), Tarrasch played like someone in the Top Ten globally for several decades, scoring just under 50% against his peers. I did find his score with Black worse than I would have expected for a player of his caliber.
Tarrasch formalized many of Steinitz’s dictums (e.g., control of the center, the value of space, the advantage of the bishop pair) but emphasized dynamic play and piece mobility far more than Steinitz. Though the hypermodernists, particularly Nimzowitsch, ridiculed Tarrasch for what they perceived as his dogmatic style, he in fact played far more flexibly than they were inclined to acknowledge.
Several openings and variations are attributed to him, notably the Tarrasch Defense and the Tarrasch variations in the French Defense and the Ruy Lopez (more commonly known as the Open Defense to the Ruy Lopez). Then there is the Tarrasch Rule which states that rooks belong behind passed pawns in endgames.
His two most well-known books were Three Hundred Chess Games and The Game of Chess, but his edition of St. Petersburg 1914 International Chess Tournament certainly merits mention. He also edited two chess magazines.
I own his The Game of Chess, but it's an older translation that uses descriptive notation. No, I never got through the whole blasted book. Much of it was of little theoretical interest to me. However, there were some useful insights of a more general nature!
As noted earlier, Tarrasch earned a top three spot in my Chess QuoteMasters Series. I've replicated the quotes here.
Tempo is the soul of chess. [Tarrasch’s Schachzeitung, 15 November 1933, p.56]
Up to this point White has been following well-known analysis. But now he makes a fatal error: he begins to use his own head. Humourous Chess Quotes
When you don’t know what to do, wait for your opponent to get an idea — it’s sure to be wrong! Humourous Chess Quotes
What is the object of playing a gambit opening?... To acquire a reputation of being a dashing player at the cost of losing a game. Chess Quotes - Gambits
One doesn't have to play well, it's enough to play better than your opponent. Chess Quotes - Success
I believed that to win it was quite sufficient for me to sit down at the board and make moves. [Dreihundert Schachpartien, Tarrasch, 1895, p.206]
I have always a slight feeling of pity for the man who has no knowledge of chess. [Das Schachspiel, Tarrasch, 1931, preface]
Any moderately talented player, he need not be exceptionally gifted, can become a master. But really, there is no need for that. The right standpoint is to play for pleasure – and do not think that pleasure is proportional to skill. The greatest bunglers are constantly deriving the greatest pleasure from chess – they go into ecstasies of delight when their knight forks a king and queen. [The Game of Chess, Tarrasch, London, 1935, p.xi]
First-class players lose to second-class players because second-class players sometimes play a first-class game. Chess Quotes by Siegbert Tarrasch
Here is what others had to say about Tarrasch.
Chess strategy as such today is still in its diapers, despite Tarrasch's statement 'We live today in a beautiful time of progress in all fields'. Not even the slightest attempt has been made to explore and formulate the laws of chess strategy. – Aaron Nimzowitsch Chess Quotes - Theory
There is no game on earth played by anybody but Dr Tarrasch in which he would not point out a mistake or a faster road to victory or improvement of some kind. In his criticisms his personality must be predominant. This is the one great weakness of the doctor’s critical judgment. – Emanual Lasker, Lasker’s Chess Magazine, January 1906, page 126 (There was tremendous hostility between these two goliaths of the game.)
Tarrasch was certainly one of the great masters of all time. His brilliant period extended from 1889 to 1907. Order and method were his gods. When everything went right, he was unbeatable. But he ruled out the personal factors in chess, and that was his undoing. In defeat poor Tarrasch had the longest list of the most curious alibis ever seen in the chess world. In fact, some people rudely suggested that his alibis were more ingenious than his chess. – Fred Reinfeld, How to Play Chess Like a Champion, 1956, p.79. [Edward Winter's site suggests that Reinfeld did not adequately substantiate this claim. Siegbert Tarrasch by Edward Winter]
The proponents of Steinitz' theory - Tarrasch and his supporters - tried to express Steinitz' teaching in the form of laconic rules, and as often happens in such cases, they went too far. The laconic tended to become dogmatic, and chess began to lose its freshness, originality and charm. - Kotov Chess Quotes - Theory
The picture of Tarrasch during tournament play is one hard to forget. He has all the appearance of a diminutive Spartan. I have seen him in important games staring fixedly at the chess board for fully an hour, so intently that one would think his sight was piercing the table, perfectly rigid, not even the smallest muscle twitching, straight-backed and with an almost painful seriousness in his face – a living statue. – J R Capablanca, Evening Post (New York), 22 July 1916, p.9.
To my mind, Tarrasch is a very weak tactician. Coming always well prepared to his matches, he becomes terribly flustered in emergencies and at unexpected developments. He thinks long and painfully over his moves, for to Tarrasch the loss of a game is worse than the tortures of hell. Ibid
The kind of overly deep analysis that often suits my desires. It's not useful for all. Not even for me at times.
Given these are fifty of the greatest players of all time, how were they as annotators? Well, for those who wrote books we could truly explore that question in depth. But to keep the playing field even, I had been including only games taken from a DB. Why that limitation? Well, I didn't want to burden myself with transcribing comments from a book into a pgn file. Or increase my debt burden by buying books of those who did not yet offer free access to books released to the public domain. Besides, far easier and faster to look for annotated games in an online database. Eventually, I changed my position on that for the reasons given in Hall of Fame #41: Jan Timman (The Best of the West!). There was nothing useful in the DBs I explored. So, books were now in. Then #45, Chuckie forced me to revisit my thinking yet again. No DB analyses, no obscure sites providing analysis, no books available to me. Sigh. Roll the tape and go for a video review of the action!!
Fortunately, I did manage to find several games with annotations by Tarrasch. Would I have used a book from my library had it been necessary? You betcha!
Nimzowitsch, Aron - Tarrasch, Siegbert, St Petersburg International Preliminary, 28.04.1914
Clash of styles, clash of temperaments, clash of titans! You can listen to NM @SamCopeland's views on this game, or you can follow Tarrasch's contemporary notes in the diagram below!
When they played this game, ChessMetrics estimates Nimzowitsch's rating at 2738 and Tarrasch's at 2723, placing them #5 and #6 in the world, a bit behind Rubinstein, Capablanca, Marshall, and Alekhine. Nimzowitsch was the up and comer, aged 27 (despite the image of a much older Nimzo shown above). Tarrasch would be considered well past his prime in modern terms. He had just turned 52 at the time of this game.
Tarrasch played his favorite opening against the queen's pawn, the Tarrasch Defense. I find it amusing that the defense generally leads to a fianchetto of the black bishop to b7. The hypermodernists did not invent placing a bishop on the diagonal. After Black's fourteenth move, hanging pawns appeared in the center. A few slight inaccuracies by Nimzowitsch on his 15th and 16th moves soon allowed Tarrasch to push his d-pawn to d4, opening diagonals for his bishop pair to point dangerously at the white king. When White failed to recognize the danger and captured on d4, it was game over time, with a classic double bishop sacrifice to expose the white king. [@JustGettingThisOffMyChess, who should be a Top Blogger, wrote a fantastic, fun-facts-filled blog about the double bishop sacrifice at Valentine's Day: This Bishop Knew his F8.]
Let's jump to the game, with Tarrasch's notes, as translated from the German by online tools. The second version shown below is in the original German, exactly as I found it in the ChessBase DB.
Ah, a wonderful battle between generational talents. One that ended in favor of the older generation. Given I'm almost always on the older side of that equation in any social (or even unsociable) interaction, I have a better appreciation for older lions who are able to defend their pride...for the moment.
Capablanca, Jose Raul - Tarrasch, Siegbert, St Petersburg International Final, 12.05.1914
Okay, time to look at a game Tarrasch lost, and see if the fact he lost causes personal reflection in his analysis of the game! There are multiple videos online referring to this game, but I wanted a memorable image parked in this section, so am only sharing a still from agadmator's chess channel.
Capablanca was clearly in the ascendant at this point, but Tarrasch was not that far removed from the peak of his powers. That said, the age difference of 27 years surely favored the younger Capablanca in events like St Petersburg that remind me of marathons. The preliminary rounds were complete and now the St Petersburg final was in full swing. For a little historical context, this took place a little over a month before the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand started a war that quickly devolved into trench warfare and the use of cruel weapons such as mustard gas.
As you can see in the diagram above, the game reached a position where one of the few positives White could proclaim were a relatively lackluster bishop pair. Time to jump into the game and see what Tarrasch had to say about this striking victory for Capa.
A fine gem of a game.
Care for a journey down memory lane? Just pick your path! The whole purpose of this section is to address some obvious questions that might pop into your head. How come Kevin didn't talk about this? Or that? Not to mention the other thing! Well, just call me lazy! Or you could appreciate the fact I'm limiting the word count that is imposed on you😏.
Nonetheless, in the series I'll be using this little section to provide links to more fulsome discussions that revolve around some well-known and lesser-known facets of the featured chess giant. That will range from videos to links to other chess.com blogs, usually by Top Bloggers. Enjoy or skip, it's your call, as always.
- GM @Julio_Becerra wrote about The Doctor of Chess in November 2009 and offered a number of challenging puzzles.
- IM@Silman The Great Siegbert Tarrasch: Puzzles And Games Jeremy offered a bio, multiple puzzles, and some analysis. Good stuff!
- NM @SamCopeland offers the following battle between unlike-minded theoreticians: Tarrasch Settles A Grudge - Best Of The 1910s - Nimzowitsch vs. Tarrasch, 1914
- Top Blogger @DonMcKim Siegbert Tarrasch is unique because it offers up a crossword puzzle of some of Tarrasch's many aspects.
- The prequel to @Steakanator's next two blogs with links directly below! Romantic Rumble: Siegbert Tarrasch vs. Johann Berger
- Top Blogger @Steakanator is part of his ongoing historical contests that ask readers to vote on which historic player would have beaten another. Romantic Rumble: Mikhail Chigorin vs. Siegbert Tarrasch
- In Loser's POV: Siegbert Tarrasch (1883-1889) @Steakanator explores Tarrasch, who lost in the reader's poll against Chigorin, found in the prior link.
- Top Blogger @kahns in the first of several parts A Century of Chess: Siegbert Tarrasch (1900-1909). Stories, games, pictures, and more!
- Top Blogger @kahns takes a look at a decade of Siegbert Tarrasch (from 1910-19).
- Top Blogger @kahns A Century of Chess: Siegbert Tarrasch (1920-29) takes a look at this GM who many thought had fallen off his game by the Roaring 20s
- Top Blogger @kahns A Century of Chess: Lasker-Tarrasch 1908 covers their World CC match.
- Top Blogger @simaginfan looks at My Favourite Annotators. Part Eight. Siegbert Tarrasch. I always appreciate great analysts myself!
- For a historian's pov, you can never go wrong with Siegbert Tarrasch by Edward Winter
- Your always reliable source for lots of data on any famous chess player is Siegbert Tarrasch - Wikipedia
- Siegbert Tarrasch | Top Chess Players - Chess.com
I'm stopping there. Certainly, there are more chess.com blogs and articles about Tarrasch that I've left out, but this was just to offer a sample, not serve as a comprehensive index to all the posts about Tarrasch.
Time for an always entertaining GM Ben Finegold video!
That's it for the 17th installment of my own take on chess.com's 50 greatest players of all time. Hope you enjoyed the blog. The good GMs below have a full selection of videos and puzzles dedicated to each of the fifty.
Cheers!
If you enjoy reading "greatest of" lists then you might also enjoy chess.com's Every Chess 'Player Of The Decade' (From Morphy To Magnus).
Sources for this information included chess.com, wikipedia.com, ChessBase, FIDE, individuals' websites, YouTube.com, news articles, books, and other sources. Plus, my faulty memories. I mixed, matched, cut, and pasted so much that separation is implausible, and I apologize for misattributions. Particularly with quotes which are found in a thousand repositories, not to mention book covers, t-shirts, and the rantings of chess coaches of whom I've had more than a few thanks to Chess University and @AttilaTurzo (my primary instructor and co-author of three books, for different chess strengths, we are writing on how to analyze during a game and after.)
HoF #49: Karjakin–"The Minister of Defense"
HoF #48: Portisch–"The Hungarian Botvinnik"
HoF #47: Polugaevsky–"The Great Poluga"
HoF #46: Kamsky–"London's King"
HoF #44: Leko–"The Cement Meister"
HoF #43: Winawer (The French King)
HoF #42: Najdorf–"Happy-Go-Lucky"
HoF #41: Jan Timman (The Best of the West!)
HoF #40: Mikhail Chigorin (Father of the Russian School of Chess)
HoF #39: Boris Gelfand (The Piece Twirler)
HoF #38: Efim Geller (The Giant Killer)
Hall of Fame #37: Harry Pillsbury
