Emmanuel Lasker, the forgotten genius?
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I am always surprised by the lack of recognition the great Lasker gets. He was world champion for as yet an unmatched 27 years and continued to dominate the chess world for another decade. He faced the best romantic players, went on to defeat then world champion Steinitz, the father of positional chess and finally crush the hypermodern including Alekhine, Reti, Nimzovitch. He lost the crown to Capablanca but their individual matches were a tie.
I wonder why Lasker is not recognized as much as the other chess world greats?
Apr 6, 2018
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#2
I seriously doubt Lasker is forgotten. He is one of the greatest of all time for a reason. My only issue with him is that he never challenged anyone at there peak for the title. matches against Marshall, Tarrash, and Janowski? All very strong players, but none of the the caliber of Lasker.
In his 1974 book "The Golden Dozen", Irving Chernev analyzes games from the players he considers to be the 12 best ( really this spans the period from 1900-1975 ).
Fischer came in fourth, Lasker was third, Alekhine second and Capablanca first.
Capablanca did some amazing things like play actively for a decade and only lose ONE GAME ! Also he gave a simul where he won 102 games and drew one, losing none.
Apr 6, 2018
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#4
BobbyTalparov wrote:
FishEyedFools wrote:
I seriously doubt Lasker is forgotten. He is one of the greatest of all time for a reason. My only issue with him is that he never challenged anyone at there peak for the title. matches against Marshall, Tarrash, and Janowski? All very strong players, but none of the the caliber of Lasker.
To be fair, all of the early World Champions used their position to limit their opposition in title matches. But that aside, until Capablanca, no one else was even close to Lasker's level. Tarrasch was considered to be the top challenger (even when Marshall got his shot and was smacked down harshly for his efforts). Complaining about him not playing anyone "tough" in a world championship match is a bit like complaining that the 1972 Miami Dolphins never beat anyone "tough".
That swhy i qualified my statement with "All very strong players, but none of the the caliber of Lasker."
He did avoid Capablanca til he had no choice, and never played Tarrasch in his prime.
Apr 6, 2018
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#5
BobbyTalparov wrote:
FishEyedFools wrote:
That's why i qualified my statement with "All very strong players, but none of the the caliber of Lasker."
He did avoid Capablanca til he had no choice, and never played Tarrasch in his prime.
There were talks about playing Tarrasch in 1904, but Tarrasch had to back out after being injured in an ice skating accident. Interestingly enough, Lasker challenged Tarrasch to a match in 1892, but Tarrasch declined the match stating that he would only accept after Lasker had won a tournament Tarrasch "approved" of. So, Lasker skipped him and went straight to being Steinitz 2 years later. Prior to their 1908 match (which Lasker won easily), Lasker and Tarrasch had played twice (1895 and 1896), where each had won once.
The situation with Capablanca was a bit more complicated. Capa tried to challenge him (literally) after winning a single tournament. Then there was the situation with Rubinstein to consider ...
These are the things you run in to when there are no rules, and regulations, and the champion gets to dictate who, when, where, why, and how much. Then at times...Im not sure FIDE is any better.
No one played better than Fisher.
Lasker was the first universal player, he can attack, play positional and one the greatest endgame player.
Apr 6, 2018
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#8
Not forgotten, but certainly misspelled. If you respect Emanuel Lasker and his achievements, than at least spell his name correctly. The creator of this thread needs to correct its title.
sorry for misspelling Lasker first name.
Apr 6, 2018
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#10
Erfico wrote:
sorry for misspelling Lasker first name.
Its not that big of a deal. We knew who you talking about :-)
Apr 6, 2018
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#11
Maybe cuz it happened 200 years ago? who cares aobut old stuff, he sucked corn. played like a blind 12 year old on his first FIDE rated match. he sukz.
Lasker, Capablanca, and Alekhine stood head and shoulders above everyone else for a very long time. All three deserve to be considered among the very best who have ever played. Lasker was the first truly great World Champion, and maintained a truly exemplary level of play against every system and specialist which it was his challenge to master, during an era where literally everything would be thrown at him.
I also object to the notion that Tarrasch was "past his prime" during their match. Tarrasch displayed the same level of play in 1920 as he did in the 1890s. The rest of the chess world got better, and unlike Lasker, Tarrasch was unable to adapt to the new styles and systems coming to the fore (the hypermoderns most notably).
I don't think anyone who knows the history of chess would consider Lasker forgotten. He is every bit as famous to most of us as Capablanca or Alekhine. And deservedly so.
http://www.chessgames.com/player/emanuel_lasker.html almost 1200 games for you to study, and plenty of them are just as exciting as any morphy game.
Apr 6, 2018
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#14
Lasker was indeed a strong chess player. Post #13 just demonstrates how Lasker is not "forgotten"; we all knew what the original forum poster was talking about. This is strong evidence in showing how well known Lasker was (and still is).
#15 post is spot on too, especially the last paragraph.
As far as Lasker being a genius ... all I can say is that I rarely predict Lasker's moves. When I go over famous " classics" of chess games, I often can guess a decent number of the moves (a good training exercise, by the way); however, Lasker's combinations often escape me - leaving me in awe, or wonder. The way that Lasker thinks is certainly unique. I certainly do not think this way. Lasker is considered one of the best chess players ever - and he deserves it.
FishEyedFools schreef:
I seriously doubt Lasker is forgotten. He is one of the greatest of all time for a reason. My only issue with him is that he never challenged anyone at there peak for the title. matches against Marshall, Tarrash, and Janowski? All very strong players, but none of the the caliber of Lasker.
Maybe there were not so much very strong players then at the moment. But he played Carl Schlechter too and he almost lost this maths!
Compared to his contemporaries, Lasker played like an alien.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1034952 Soltis has a great collection of top-notch Lasker games.
Why Lasker Matters by Andrew Soltis
https://web.archive.org/web/20140708093349/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review538.pdf
John Nunn's Chess Course
http://www.gambitbooks.com/pdfs/John_Nunn's_Chess_Course.pdf