A Century of Chess: Richard Teichmann (1910-19)

Richard Teichmann was a kind of running joke in the chess world as ‘Richard the Fifth’ — for his eight (!) fifth place finishes over the course of his career. Fifth place wasn’t just a numerical accident. Teichmann, who was always broke, was playing to finish in the money and was unwilling to take risks against the tournament’s leading players. He became a pioneer in what would be a perennial problem in the chess world — the phenomenon of ‘the grandmaster draw,’ in which players refused to play to the crowd at all and instead counted points and saved their strength in order to optimize their results. 

But, in 1911, Teichmann’s mother died, he came into a modest inheritance, and for the only time in his career, really, showed what he could do with his full powers on display. He came clear first out of the marathon field at Karlsbad, and his games there are a nice demonstration of the power of flexible and precise play. In his games Teichmann seemed never to set out to dazzle but played precisely, had a good tactical eye, and was often able to find resources that his highly-talented opponents overlooked. 

Teichmann could be unassuming and never acquired much of a reputation with the chess public, but other masters had a good sense of his strength. Capablanca, surprisingly, lists him as being in the top five in the world in 1914. And head-to-head tabulations back up that assessment. By my tally, Teichmann had a better record in the 1910s than such famous players as Tarrasch, Marshall, Nimzowitsch, and Duras. He took third at a strong tournament in Breslau, decisively won a match against Rudolf Spielmann in 1914. And there was the sense that if he had really exerted himself he might have been able to have had much more impressive results over the course of his career. 

In a really wonderful piece, Michael Negele documents Teichmann’s sufferings during the war years. He was caught in Switzerland and struggled immensely: he was so poor that he found himself scouring the ground for cigarette butts; and he attempted to commit suicide in Lake Geneva. Chess circles came to Teichmann’s rescue, giving him a sinecure in Zurich, but the war seemed to break Teichmann’s spirit. He played only intermittently afterwards and was in very poor health until his death in 1925.

Teichmann's Style:

Simplicity. Teichmann is like a patron saint of club players — demonstrating how far it is possible to get in chess without theoretical pretentiousness, or without doing very much special. He played clean, logical chess, was alert to tactical opportunities — and that was enough to bring him into the world's top five or six. 

Sources: Michael Negele's article is the main source for Teichmann's later life.