The Match with Marshall

This blog post is part of a newsletter series going over Capablanca's classic book 'My Chess Career'. If you want to follow for free go to saychess.substack.com

The Match with Marshall.

No difficulty was experienced in arranging the match. Marshall was disposed to play in this case where he naturally discounted his victory. How far he was wrong the result proved. I beat him eight to one with fourteen draws thrown in between. I can safely say that no player ever performed such a feat, as it was my first encounter against a master, and such a master, one of the first ten in the whole world. The most surprising feature of all was the fact that I played without having ever opened a book to study the openings; in fact, had Marshall played such things as Danish Gambits, Vienna openings, or the like, the result might have been different. I certainly should have experienced more difficulty in obtaining such a result.

I had only looked up an analysis of the Ruy Lopez by Lasker, on the f5-defence, but the analysis was wrong, as it did not give the strongest continuation for Black. This, and whatever I knew from experience or hearsay, was all my stock of knowledge for the match. My victory put me at once in the foremost rank among the great masters of the game. The play during the match showed that I was weak in the openings and just about strong enough in the simple play for position. My great strength lay in the end game, and I also excelled in combinations of the middle game. I had a fine judgment as to whether a given position was won or lost, and was able to defend a difficult position as few players could, as I repeatedly demonstrated during the course of the match, in repulsing Marshall’s onslaughts. I may add that my style was not as yet either definite or complete, though it had a wide range, i.e. I could attack almost as well as I could defend, and could make combinations in the middle game nearly as well as play the endings where I felt more at home and was decidedly strongest.

Here are some of the games with notes as I see them today.

GAME No. 7.

The Fifth Game of the Match.
F. Marshall vs. J. R. Capablanca, 0-1
Year: 1909
Opening: Queen's Gambit Declined (Lasker Defence)