Steinitz - Lasker 1894. New Blood
The 5th official world chess championship was played by Wilhelm Steinitz & Emanuel Lasker during March - May of 1894 in New York, Philadelphia & Montreal.
Steinitz, then at the age of 58, was already at the top of the chess world for years; having won multiple tournaments and matches, and 4 times the world chess championship. He was a US citizen since 1888.
Lasker a 24 year-old rising star had proved himself in Europe winning opponents such as Blackburne, Mieses & Bird the previous years. And searching for new challenges he can be found in the USA since the autumn of 1892. There, among others he faced successfully Jackson Showalter in 1893, the US champion. Funnily enough the only recorded Lasker's defeat during his stay in the US was by Nellie Showalter, Jackson's wife and of the best US women chess players at the time. He lost with -5+2, at the odds of a knight...
Since Aug 1893 Lasker asked from Steinitz for a world championship match. In the end Lasker's suggested terms were more or less accepted. On Mar 3, 1894, the agreement's articles were signed at the Manhattan chess club, NY. The match would start on Mar 15 in NY, continued in Philadelphia and concluded in Montreal. As time limit was agreed 15 moves per hour. First to 10 wins would be declared world chess champion, draws not counted, and receive the total amount of the stakes; $2,000 by each side.
New York
- 15.03.1894-05.04.1894
- Union Square Hotel, NY
- Lasker - Steinitz: +4-2=2 // total: +4-2=2
A game that was of the first that I've ever noticed. With this Lasker took the lead. Fascinating!
Philadelphia
- 14.04.1894-21.04.1894
- Franklin Chess Club, PHL
- Lasker - Steinitz: +3-0=0 // total: +7-2=2
A good endgame play by Lasker; that at one point it could indicate the depth of players' calculation. In these 3 games it's noticeable an early Q exchange. Also the two Lasker's wins with white were same color bishop endgames.
Montreal
- 03.05.1894-26.05.1894
- Cosmopolitan Club, MTL
- Lasker - Steinitz: +3-3=2 // total: +10-5=4
I've found a photo that info from web are indicating Montreal 1894. I can't be 100% sure...
In Montreal Steinitz maybe had his best performance. In the following game Steinitz saw the chance and took it on the 19th move; and with good endgame skill in the end won.
After this game, there's a gap of about a week. In the Canadian press we are reading...
But in the American press...
And maybe the most famous photo of the match...
Aftermath
The following are some comments by Lasker on the 1894 chess championship match, written in 1906. The text is as given in Landsberger [pp. 301-302]. The same is reproduced in Kingston. I couldn't track the original source; but by the context it's more possibly from Lasker's Chess Magazine on the occasion of the Lasker - Marshall 1907.
"When I challenged Steinitz in the autumn of 1893,1 was full of the confidence which one has at the age of 25, and slowly loses with maturing experience. Steinitz had then held supremacy in chess for twenty-eight years. The world was impressed by his achievements over the board; in analysis he had undoubtedly advanced chess thought, and his personality had the halo which comes from uninterrupted success. But I had played over his match games and from them gained the conviction that in playing with me he would have to solve different problems than formerly. I was curious as to the outcome; not afraid of it. I believed that I understood the principles preached by Steinitz, that an attack before it is undertaken must be well prepared. I appreciated the fine conception of "balance" that Steinitz had discovered, and at which he had hinted. I resolved to make no attacks until the balance of position had been disturbed in my favor. And, for the rest, I had faith. I was intensely interested to see how Steinitz would fare against an opponent who would apply these two principles in a sufficiently faultless fashion, conscious of the fact that he had never encountered such a style before. And to make that issue clear, I resolved to refrain from those openings in which it was notorious that Steinitz held unsound and crochety opinions, viz. the Evans Gambit and the Two Knights Defense.... When Steinitz entered this contest he felt sure of victory. But when fate went against him and he found himself, for the first time in his life, beaten, he behaved with the utmost chivalry. His way of resigning the last game of the match was to call for cheers for the new champion of the world."
The last game was played on May 26. Steinitz didn't let the time pass and on June 1st, being still in Montreal, he challenged Lasker for the rematch. Lasker accepted of course but with no fixed date. Correspondence followed where Steinitz was pressing and demanding a sooner date and Lasker was claiming that some commitments would delay the rematch. This was irritating enough for Steinitz so that in a complaining letter of Oct 10 he signed as "Chess Champion of the World", saying that the Lasker's deadline expired, something that was meaning a de facto refusal of the rematch [check BCM 1894, 295ff & 452ff].
As it's already known this rematch in the end started two years later in Nov 1896, in Moscow.
The games of the match can be found in https://www.chess.com/events/1886-lasker-vs-steinitz/19/Emanuel_Lasker-Wilhelm_Steinitz. But for quick downloading...
And a colorful description of a day of the match...
Sources:
- British chess magazine, v.14 (1894)
- Deutsche Schachzeitung, v. 49 (1894)
- American press in https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/
- Canadian & other press in https://news.google.com/newspapers
- New York Recorder newspaper in http://www.chessarch.com/excavations/excavations.php?a=1&source=New_York_Recorder
- Henry Bird, Steinitz & Lasker Match, 1894
- J. G. Cunningham (ed), The Games in the Steinitz-Lasker Championship Match, 1894
- Kurt Landsberger, William Steinitz, Chess Champion, 1995-2006
- Taylor Kingston, Emanuel Lasker: A Reader, 2019
- Isaak and Vladimir Linder, Emanuel Lasker, Second World Chess Champion, 2010
- William Hartston, The kings of chess, 1985
....thanx for reading
