José Raúl Capablanca became interested in chess at the age of four, watching his father play and also having glimpsed the great Russian player Michail Čigorin in the streets of the city, engaged in a match with the reigning world champion Wilhelm Steinitz.
In 1899, Juan Corzo became Cuban champion, with whom a precocious talent like that of José Raúl could not fail to compete: the match was held in November-December 1901 and ended with the victory of the thirteen-year-old Capablanca with 4 victories and 3 defeats over 13 games.
In 1909 the match was organized with the American Frank Marshall, one of the strongest masters in the world and the best player on the continent. Capablanca triumphed with eight victories and one defeat in twenty-three matches.
In 1911, at the United States championship, he finished second with eight victories and one defeat in twelve games, surpassed by Marshall.
At the end of 1911 he officially invited the world champion Lasker to compete in a title match. The latter imposed unacceptable conditions - the challenger would have to win two more matches to obtain the title - and the negotiations broke down. At the beginning of 1920, exhausting negotiations began with Lasker to organize the match valid for the world title. Finally, having obtained a salary of 11,000 dollars, the fifty-two-year-old Lasker, world champion for twenty-seven years, agreed to play in Havana on a limit of twenty-four games; the tournament began on March 15, 1921, but fourteen games were enough: on April 27, Lasker abandoned the tournament after losing four, with ten draws, complaining of health problems. Capablanca was world champion. In 1926 Alechin got the Argentine government to finance and organize the world championship to be held in Buenos Aires between him and Capablanca by 1927. When, on September 16, 1927, the two great adversaries sat down in the chess club of Buenos Aires, the victory predictions were all for Capablanca. But the first game Alekhine won with Black; Capablanca recovered in the third game and took the lead in the seventh. Everything seemed to be going according to plan, but Alekhine won the eleventh game and, perhaps demoralized by the many mistakes he had made, Capablanca also lost the next one.
At 3-2 for Alekhine, eight draws followed; in the twenty-first round Capablanca lost his patience, complicated the game and ended up losing; in the twenty-seventh he made a sensational mistake and missed the opportunity to win, but he won the twenty-ninth.
At 4-3 it seemed that the match could be rebalanced, but, after two draws, Alekhine won the thirty-second and Capablanca collapsed: having drawn the next one, he lost the thirty-fourth and the title, and no longer had the opportunity for a rematch, because Alekhine he never gave it to her. On the evening of March 7, 1942, while he was analyzing a game at the chess club in Manhattan, he felt ill: immediately helped by Dr. Eli Moschcowitz, a member of the club, he was transported to the Mount Sinai hospital, the same one where the year before Lasker was dead. Capablanca died around 6:00 the next morning from a stroke. His remains rest in Havana in the Colón cemetery. On the tomb, located in the main avenue, there is only one inscription "Capablanca". A white marble king adorns the tomb.
