Teichmann-Spielmann 1914

An attractive match between two fighting players. Spielmann and Teichmann were of roughly equal strength and a similar temperament. Spielmann was a more one-sided player - a confirmed Neo-Romantic - but both he and Teichmann were distinguished by a sharp eye for tactical opportunities. To the surprise of the spectators, Teichmann won very easily, by four points. 

He won the first game when an exchange sacrifice by Spielmann led nowhere. Spielmann took Game 2 when Teichmann lost patience in an inferior ending.

Game 3 was the turning point of the match — a miniature in which Teichmann just blew Spielmann off the board. 

Spielmann never recovered from there. He miscalculated a fairly simple line in Game 4. In Game 5, which was the best game of the match, Teichmann uncorked a seven-moves deep combination that won a pawn out of the opening. 

There’s not a tremendous amount to say about the match. It turned on tactics — and the knotty variations all seemed to work against Spielmann. Lasker, who can almost always be counted upon in his commentary, claimed that Spielmann's poor showing must have reflected a lack of interest — the match was played for an honorarium but no prize, and Lasker argued that a prize really was needed to sufficiently motivate chess masters. Something in the match seems to have generated some bad blood between the two players. Years later, Spielmann was corruscating about Teichmann. "His ambition was as small as could be imagined but his need for personal comfort was as great as could be imagined," Spielmann wrote. "When he fought, it was only because he somehow felt his rest threatened. How he was able to become such an important chess master is almost mystery. The game of chess didn't particularly interest him either: a vigorous wrestling match, a good glass of whisky, or of course a Virginia cigar could give him much more pleasure." 

Unfortunately, the match is one of our last glimpses of Teichmann - who would have a very difficult experience during the war (attempting suicide while in Switzerland) and then played undistinguishedly in only a few tournaments in the 1920s, "becoming even more sluggish with age," as Spielmann wrote. He had been a stalwart of classical chess, rising in almost perfect parallel to Emanuel Lasker and occupying the middle of the pack of so many classical tournaments. Curiously, he peaked in the early 1910s, winning at Karlsbad 1911 and decisively winning the Spielmann match. Capablanca, in 1914, rated him one of the top five players in the world. 

Sources: Michael Negele has a fantastic piece on Teichmann during the war years. Lasker's notes on the match are found in The American Chess Bulletin 1914.