A Century of Chess: Richard Teichmann (1900-1909)

As Ragozin was to Botvinnik, Balashov to Karpov, Psakhis to Kasparov, Sargissian to Aronian, so Teichmann was to Emanuel Lasker - the same type of player, from the same background, but never quite achieving the same results. Actually, the story went that Teichmann and Lasker were both born on the same day - December 24, 1868. The real chess sleuths have figured out that that's not actually the case, but both Teichmann and Lasker assumed it to be true - so much so that, according to Lasker, coming to a door at the same time, they couldn't figure out which one should enter first. 

The two of them had very similar careers. They came to prominence in 1890s Berlin, which at the time had the most dynamic chess scene in Europe, then embarked on a bohemian existence, never having a fixed job and shifting back and forth between the English-speaking and German-speaking worlds. 

Maybe even more so than Lasker, Teichmann had a unique, prodigious brain. Lasker, who clearly liked him enormously, recalled, "He is an educated person who knows such things as Old French and Old English as well as half a dozen modern languages, with whom one can excellently discuss music and philosophy and other things, but who has a bit of rustic roughness about it all." The overwhelming sense I have with the two of them is that they were born in a buoyant culture at an optimistic time, they had some vision of a cosmopolitan existence in which chess excellence would be viewed as an intellectual attainment and a fitting complement to their many other areas of expertise, and instead found themselves always hard up for money - Teichmann eked out a living as a chess and language teacher - and a bit embarrassed about their own chess prowess. 

Lasker aside, though, Teichmann suffered from a peculiar, un-Lasker-like malady - an apparently incurable laziness and phlegmatism. This is sometimes explained as the result of ill health or overwork, but everybody who encountered Teichmann remarked on it and it seems to have been very deeply a part of his constitution - much in the way that a similar laziness turned Salo Flohr and Boris Spassky, in the later part of their careers, into, essentially, second-tier players. In his play that had the result that, although a natural tactician and gifted attacker, he turned into a 'drawing master'; and in his writing he never seemed to exert himself much - Irving Chernev called him "the laziest annotator" and Rudolf Spielmann recalled that his weekly chess column came together "only after several days of groaning and groaning"; and in his life he was clearly afflicted with a certain Oblomovism, never fully taking advantage of his abundant intellectual gifts. 

To the chess world, he became a curiosity - 'Richard the Fifth,' the moniker he received from his uncanny capacity to finish in fifth place in international tournaments. (The title was justly earned - he finished in fifth a remarkable eight times over the course of his career - and this of course wasn't an accident, fifth suited his phlegmatic disposition, playing well, never exerting himself that much, finishing in the prize money.) But to the elite Teichmann's diffidence was an opportunity wasted - everybody felt that Teichmann had a staggering talent and could have achieved much more in chess if he had really applied himself and been willing to take more risks. As Milan Vidmar wrote somewhat irritably, "A rare mishap has hidden from the chess world a star of the first magnitude. He was fifth in almost every tournament because that place was comfortable for him." Capablanca, impressed with his lone first place finish - at Carlsbad 1911 - rated him in 1914 one of the top five players in the world. Chernev, in his same article of all-time lists, called Teichmann "the most underrated player." 

To those who were most critical of him, the issue was that he was addicted to creature comforts. Rudolf Spielmann seems to have had a bone to pick with Teichmann - maybe a result of some ill will from their 1914 match - and wrote, "His ambition was as small as could be imagined, but his need for peaceful comfort was as great as could be imagined. The game of chess didn't particularly interest him either; a vigorous wrestling match, a good glass of whiskey or a Virginia cigar could give him much more pleasure. How he was able to become such an important chess master is almost a mystery." That withering critique sets the stage for the really tragic spectacle of Teichmann during World War I - finding himself broke and hungry in Switzerland, collecting cigarette butts off the floor to try to smoke them, and in despair attempting to throw himself into Lake Lucerne. He was rescued by the chess community, installed as a kind of resident master in a cafe in Zurich, but, already, his health, which had always been fragile, was declining, and he clearly suffered greatly from illness for the last years of his life until his death in 1925. 

Teichmann's Style

1. Tactical Eye

Teichmann's most enduring legacy in chess is the saying 'chess is 99% tactics.' I somehow doubt that he really said this - it just doesn't feel like the idiom he would use - but even Edward Winter hasn't been able to punch a hole in this attribution. In any case, it does jibe with his approach to the game. Basically, he played in strict classical style - natural developing moves, a patient build-up in the center, a period of maneuvering to play for space, and then an attack when the time was right. Since he took very few risks, a large percentage of his games ended in draws. But he always had a very good tactical eye and in a dogfight had an ability to stay a step ahead of his opponent. 

2. Winning Easy 

In this series, I've been staying away from miniatures, consultation games, games against amateurs, etc. My theory is that all of the great masters had some distinctive way of winning against other players of the same class. But Teichmann is kind of an exception to the rule.  He actually had a good score against almost all of the top players, but he didn't really play for a win. He just made strong, solid moves, and occasionally even one of his famous opponents would go wrong. He's a testament, as per Spielmann's mocking line, of how far you can go in chess without really trying. I'd say that his enduring value is to beginning and intermediate players - he's a very good player to study, because his play is always simple and logical and goes to show how the classical, textbook approach can yield impressive results. 

Teichmann in the Opening 

And, again - to keep beating up on Teichmann - he really contributed very little to opening theory. There are a couple of 'Teichmann Variations' - in sidelines of the Blackmar-Diemer and Lasker Defense - but really he just played safe, standard lines in the Ruy Lopez and Four Knights, invariably got a playable position out of the opening and then was the equal of anybody in middlegame maneuvering and tactical play. An exception was a spate of theoretical interest in the Cambridge Springs Variation. Something about this line - which shook up chess theory in the middle of the decade - spoke to Teichmann, and he was really the first player to demonstrate its effectiveness, showing that black could seize the initiative with it early in the opening. 

Sources: 

I'm really impressed by Michael Nagele's article on Teichmann. Otherwise, there's not a lot about Teichmann online, and Nagele pulls together a whole treasure chest of quotes. It seems like much of Nagele's material comes from Richard Forster, who wrote about Teichmann in Switzerland, and then the rest is from Nagele's own digging in German archives.