Additional Games
- Chessgames
- “Chess” by Emanuel Lasker, Hartford Courant, Connecticut; inauguration to finale from 10/07/1913-04/25/1915.
- Game, Salomon Flohr vs. Emanuel Lasker, Moscow Tournament, 1936.
Emanuel Lasker
December 24, 1868 - January 11, 1941
First, Middle and Last Name: Emanuel Lasker |
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Date of Birth: December 24, 1868 |
Date of Death: January 11, 1941 |
Name of Father: Michaelis Aron Adolf Lasker |
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Name of Mother: Rosalie Lasker (Israelssohn) |
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Birth: Berlinchen (Barlinek), Berlinchen, Soldin/Mark Brandenburg, Westpommern, Prussia |
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Education: |
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Military Enlistment: |
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Occupation(s): Philosopher, mathematician |
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Residence(s): (d.) Mount Sinai Hospital, New York |
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Spouse(s): Martha Rebecca Bamberger (1867-1942) m. 1911 Ida Flematti Gianatti (1917-1989) m. 1938 |
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Siblings: Jonathan Berthold Lasker; Theophilia Hedwig Oppenheimer; Amalie Thekla Flatauer |
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Children: |
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Other: |
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August 11 1959
The Los Angeles Times, Tuesday, August 11, 1959
Conversation Piece
A Champion Who Baffled Rivals By Rudolf Flesch
If the name Emanuel Lasker means anything to you, you probably know that he was a chess champion.
But if you would ask Lasker himself what he was, he would have told you he was a philosopher and mathematician. Chess? Oh yes, he played chess, but strictly to make ends meet. That he was the world's leading chess player for almost half a century was purely incidental.
There's a new book about Lasker's fascinating life (Simon & Schuster). He started out in grueling poverty. (When he and his brother were students in Berlin, they had for a time only one pair of pants between them and had to take turns going out.) The only way he knew to make money was to play chess. He played his way up through several tournaments. By 1894, at 27, he was world champion.
He kept the title for an amazing 26 years, until at 53 he lost to Capablanca. But that wasn't the end of his chess career at all. He staged a comeback, and then another comeback, and then another. At 68, at the Nottingham tournament of 1936, he still wound up among the winners, together with Capablanca, Capablanca's successor Alekhine, Alekhine's successor Euwe, and Euwe's successor, the present (1959) world champion, Botvinnik. Not one of those younger champions managed to beat the fabulous old man.
However, as I said, Lasker never considered himself a chess pro. Far from it. There were seven or eight periods in his life when he stopped playing chess altogether for years, devoting himself to his beloved philosophical and mathematical studies. Then he would have to scrabble up some money or defend his title or something, and off he'd go to another match or tournament, mowing everybody down.
His opponents could never figure him out. He had no system, he left no theory, he was unique. He played every game so as to beat a particular man at a particular moment, uncannily spotting psychological weaknesses and playing wild, immensely dangerous hunches.
Afterward the dum-founded losers would analyze the games and write despairingly about “Lasker's incredible luck.” It wasn't luck, though it was sheer chessmanship, developed to the point of genius.
The book about his life contains a few glimpses of his philosophy. It matched his life exactly. He believed in life as a game, life as a perennial struggle. We are here on earth, he said, to take chances, to solve one problem after another as they come up.
Don't waste your life on unessentials; concentrate on whatever matters at the moment. Don't live by theories, but conserve your energies for the decisive moments.
And his conclusion was: “I deny that there is any problem of any importance that would prove to be insoluble.”
Says André Schulz: Emanuel Lasker lectures on the Saavedra study by demonstration board, before Ossip Bernstein and other bystanders.
Lasker, Emanuel
bio + additional games
December 24, 1868 - January 11, 1941
