Emanuel Lasker, Chess Giant, Part II (A Collection of Annotated Games)

This is the second part of a collection of annotated games by Emanuel Lasker, the great chess champion.

In this next game, Lasker (White) plays the Worral Attack against Teichmann's Ruy Lopez. One or two small inaccuracies from Black is all Lasker needs to mount an unstoppable attack against Black's King!

Great players can make other great players look silly, and Lasker does that to Janowski in the following game!

The next game is not just a game, it is really a Titanic battle! It is the 10th and last game from the Lasker-Schlechter WC match from 1910. Lasker had to win to retain his WC title without any doubt. Schlechter, on the other hand, was up 5-4, but the rules of the match stipulated (unfairly, I believe), that he had to win by 2 points to win the title. So both players were playing for a win!

On move 4 Schlechter, playing Black, introduces his own variation (the Schlechter Defense) in the Slav Defense, which would become a favorite of Smyslov more than 40 years later!

A super-tense and super-modern game ensues, one that is so modern, if you showed it to any player, without telling them who played it, unless they knew the game beforehand, they would not be able to tell it was played in 1910! Lasker is the father of modern chess!

Here is the game, with comments by Capablanca!

Lasker-Schlechter, World Championship Match, 1910

What a game!

Kasparov comments in his book, "My Great Predecessors, Part I" , (which, by the way, is an excellent chess book):

"A titanic battle! of course, there were many mistakes, but what an intense struggle, and with what inventiveness both sides played! The game was ahead of its time, and the commentaries on it, even later ones, often do not sustain criticism: so complicated and deep were the variations that occurred. Its study, beginning with Schlechter's opening novelty, enables us to follow the development of chess thinking. Whereas nowadays independent play at the board normally begins from the 15th move at least, here it began much earlier, and the value of every move was extremely high. "

In the next game, Tarrasch makes a mistake on the 9th move. It is all downhill from there, but Lasker's technique is world-class!

In the following game, Marshall plays some sharp moves and takes the initiative against Lasker's king, but he neglects to play a very active move, and Lasker is able to neutralize his attack!

Comments by Tarrasch!