A Century of Chess: Tarrasch-Schlechter 1911

A disappointment. There was something nice about the idea of this match - that matches did not have to be confined to the world championship, that the vice-champions (which is pretty much what Tarrasch and Schlechter were acknowledged to be at this time) could play a match as well. But there were no stakes, and, for some reason, Tarrasch and Schlechter - both wonderful, top-flight players - played well below their real strength. Lasker called the unfortunate ninth game “the game of errors” - and it’s about as blunderous as any game between top players that I’ve ever seen.

The match wasn’t all terrible. There were tough, hard-fought games - but these turned out to be grinds, with several games taking over 100 moves. Tarrasch and Schlechter were both elegant players, the epitome of classical chess, and one could have expected beautiful play, but that just wasn’t the case. And then at the end of the match, knotted up at 3-3, the players lost their ambition and limped to a drawn finish - and, as a result, the match hasn’t left even a ripple in chess history. 

For Schlechter, there was reason to be proud. Over the span of two years he had drawn with both Lasker and Tarrasch and proved that he was fully the equal of any player in the world. Meanwhile, Tarrasch’s time as a viable world championship challenger seemed to slip farther behind him - already, by 1911, it was clear that he was no longer the center of gravity for the chess world.

Sources: There's really not much out there on the match - other than at the indispensable chessgames.com. It's discussed a bit in The British Chess Magazine for 1911. Lasker wrote about it in Pester Lloyd - his columns (in German) are here.

Lasker, by the way, had an interesting take. He called Tarrasch an 'objective' player while describing Schlechter as having a very 'personal' style. This is different from the usual perception of Schlechter - Botvinnik described him in diametrically opposite terms, as a 'faceless player' - and I'm not completely sure I understand what Lasker means; but, if anyone was in position to have an acute psychological read on these two players, it would have been Lasker.