The 'Lasker Exchange'. Chess Relativity Theory.

The 'Lasker Exchange' !?!? Nope, you have never heard of it, 'cos I just invented the term for this article.

Whilst away braving hostile elements - Grandchildren and the British coastline - ( Black against Jon Speelman in blitz is less frightening!!) a post idea came into my head after reading a nice post  by our latest history blogger @NMGregoryAcholonu  

In the aforementioned post I mentioned that Lasker often gave up his Queen for various bits of material. In his day that really wasn't the done thing! Yep, it was O.K. to give up your Queen for a winning attack - that's not really a sacrifice anyway, is it - Morphy, Spielmann and Aekhine all did that in games that immediately come into my head. To do it for no obvious advantage was a different matter entirely.

In open positions - still pretty much the norm when Lasker started learning the game, The Queen usually murders a collection of other pieces, and so 'The Lasker Exchange' was not only seen as a genuine sacrifice, but also a pretty dumb idea, at the time. 

'Yeah, Alexander M'Donnell had done it in the in the immortal 50th game against La Bourdonnais, but those old-timers didn't understand chess like we do today ' was pretty much what players of the time would have thought. ( An age old story that continues to the present  day!!)

Well, Lasker was an extraordinary thinker.( Not just on chess - he was involved in a well known debate with his friend Einstein on the first theory of relativity, for example, hence the title and picture.)

He understood that what applied in open positions didn't necessarily apply in closed or 'semi-open' positions. He happily exchanged his Queen for various bits in order to make the position more strategically complex; confronting his opponent with original problems. Then he would out maneuver them, and everyone would shake their heads wondering how he did it.  

The game that gave me the idea to write this is the following one - kamalakanta has annotated it in the above mentioned post, so I will give the bare score.

Before I get into the annotated games, another example has just come to mind. 

I will let you study that one for yourselves - it is a fascinatating, albeit flawed game - and you can learn a lot about Lasker and Marshall by doing so.

The earliest game that leaped through the fog of my ailing memory was the following one. In this case, it wasn't so much a case of sacrifice, or exchange, as finding the best practical defence, but the game is pure Lasker and well worth investing some time in.

Didn't get round to changing the details for that game - it was game 9 of the match in which Lasker first established himself as a World-class player. Perhaps one day I will give the full story of the match.

I suspect that Lasker learned a lot from that particular game.

I give the other games that came to mind in the order that they were played.

One of many images of Marco - he was a big muscular unit, once described as 'the strongest chess-player in the World'!

The following game comes to mind - I have quickly downloaded it from chessgames.com with Tarrasch's notes, to which various improvements have, unsurprisingly, been found. The fact that Lasker desperately needed a win was a factor in the game.

There are various versions of Ilyin Genevsky's memories of the following game - a 'must-study' if you want to understand Lasker. One eye-witness report says that he literally jumped out of his chair in surprise when Lasker took the Pawn on a2. 

Ilyin Genevsky as he was at th time the game was played - right of picture.

And finally, a truly 'typical Lasker game'. His 26 year old opponent

was a fine positional player, who's name is now linked to a line of the Sicilian Defence. Lasker was, I think, 66 years old.