Can we stop with all the Lasker nonsense?

Lasker’s fans always talk about how how he was world champion for 27 years but fail to mention that he almost never played top players in their prime. The only time he played a top 5 player (according to chessmetrics) under the age of 46 was against Capablanca and he didn’t win a single game in that match. His average opponent age in wc matches was 43 and their average ranking 4. If we exclude Capa that goes to 45 years old and a ranking of 4.5.

Let’s break this down though:
From 1894-1907 Lasker only played ONE person in a world championship match: Steinitz. That’s half the time Lasker was world champion. Not to take anything away from Steinitz but he was 57 in the first match and only a few months from 60 in the second.

Aside from that though both Morphy and Zukertort were younger and better players than Steinitz (who died). In fact, in their primes, Morphy was about 400 points better than Steinitz. That would the equivalent of the difference between Magnus and a 30 something year old IM. Chessmetrics rates Tarrasch as the best living player from 1894-1895.

Bottom line: Lasker’s only win in a wc match in his first 13 years as champion was against a 60 year old guy who was never close to being one of the best player in his prime. The actual best living player of that time wouldn’t get a shot for another decade.

1895: A new contender emerges in Harry Nelson Pillsbury. Pillsbury was three younger than Lasker and yet won 1895 Hastings (one of the strongest tournaments in history) ahead of Lasker. Had it not been for his health issues Pillsbury would have certainly overtaken Lasker in the early 1900s and Lasker’s wc reign would have been much, much shorter.

FINALLY, in 1907 Lasker FINALLY decides to play some title defenses. He played Marshall, Tarrasch, Schlecter and Janowski. Marshall and Janowski were good players but neither were top 5 at that time. Tarrasch was well past his prime at age 46. Schlecter (who wasn’t even a top 5 player) however played Lasker to a dead draw after 10 games and Lasker barely escaped with a very controversial win. If you look through this time period though you realize there were a lot of players more deserving of title shots: Maroczy, Rubinstein and Nimzovich to name three. Capa was probably better sometime between 1911-1912 but would have to wait a decade to get a shot. Alekhine started emerging in 1913.

From 1910-1921: Not a single title defense by Lasker. That’s another 11 years of him playing nobody.24 of the 27 years he was champion he only played ONE person in 60 year old Steinitz

FINALLY in 1921 Lasker realized he couldn’t dodge top players forever and sat down to face a top player in his prime for the first time in his career. He got trounced. Capa won 4 games, Lasker won ZERO.

A lot of people will agree that Lasker’s record as wc was less than impressive but point to his “contributions to the game”. He wrote a couple of books. The problem is, there isn’t much original in those books. Steinitz could have written the exact same books 20 years before and likely Morphy 40 years before. Yes, Lasker is credited with a defense to the Evans gambit. Morphy realized the Evans gambit was drawn 40 years earlier and started playing the Ruy Lopez instead. In fact, (150 years later) one of the most topical lines in all of modern chess is the Morphy defense to the Ruy Lopez. Lasker’s Evans gambit defense could be ignored by changing move orders. Morphy was playing chess 150 years into the future. Lasker was playing chess 40 years in the past.

If you want to show me Lasker’s “contributions to the game” show me something he was doing (either through writings or games) prior to other players. I can almost guarantee you I can show earlier examples.

If you want to ignore facts and point to other people’s opinions that’s fine but remember the greatest player of all time said:

"Lasker...was a coffee-house player...(he) knew nothing about openings and didn't understand positional chess."
Robert James Fischer

Cue somebody linking the Soltis article

I think he was a cool guy doing lots of things besides the chessboard; mathematician, inventor and stuff like that. That makes him outstanding contrary to that bunch of chess-only-trained apes.

Just a balanced view:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuel_Lasker

„Recent analysis, however, indicates that he was ahead of his time and used a more flexible approach than his contemporaries, which mystified many of them.“

And why starting at 1894, what about before?

„His record in matches was equally impressive: at Berlin in 1890 he drew a short play-off match against his brother Berthold; and won all his other matches from 1889 to 1893, mostly against top-class opponents: Curt von Bardeleben (1889), Jacques Mieses (1889), Henry Edward Bird (1890), Berthold Englisch (1890), Joseph Henry Blackburne (1892), Jackson Showalter (1892–93) and Celso Golmayo Zúpide (1893).[16][17] Chessmetrics calculates that Emanuel Lasker became the world's strongest player in mid-1890,[18] and that he was in the top ten from the very beginning of his recorded career in 1889.“

This wasn’t bad either: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg_1914_chess_tournament

Concluding, I have rather a good memory/reputation of him.

(PS: today he would stand no chance but that applies to all of the old masters including Fischer. ;) )

hello boss ku

By the way, Fischer was the greatest among the bat-shit insane, so what then?

Something new in the web! Bashing of persons. getting beer and popcorn

@Lasker and other world champions http://www.kramnik.com/eng/interviews/getinterview.aspx?id=61

As the link doesn't work atm
https://tartajubow.blogspot.com/2010/11/kramnik-on-world-champions.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/al4zxs/kramnik_discusses_past_world_champions/

But Kramnik is boring, too matter-of-factly. ;)

@Sarg0n

"I think he was a cool guy doing lots of things besides the chessboard; mathematician, inventor and stuff like that. That makes him outstanding contrary to that bunch of chess-only-trained apes. "

Morphy only played chess because he finished school but was still too young to practice law. In his spare time he also memorized the complete Louisiana book of codes and laws.

Fine also had a career outside of chess.

In Lasker's case though, he only had free time because he was avoiding playing top chess players. If there were a regular candidates cycle that wouldn't have happened. Twice in his reign he didn't play a single wc match for an entire decade. In the few years he did play, he wasn't playing the top challengers.

@Savage47

There is a empirical psychological law. Formulating it simple: If you put enough time into an attitude it's very hard to change it.

So be patient with all those idiots, like I am one, who think that Lasker played great chess and additional to all those idiots, like I am, who think it needs a juvenile personality to seek for heroes.

https://vimeo.com/65296913

@jupp53

Kramnik's comments about LASKER:

"I was not impressed with Tarrasch's play. He had imaginative ideas but like all players of that time he was prone to rigidity. We should not forget Rubinstein, an incredibly talented and fantastic chess player. Sometimes he created true masterpieces and was way ahead of his time. "

Funny that when talking about Lasker he actually doesn't actually mention Lasker much. He says players of that time (ie Lasker) "were prone to rigidity" then goes off on a tangent about Rubinstein. It sounds more like he agrees with me than disagrees with me.

And like I said if we start getting into opinions, Fischer trumps everybody especially when Kramnik speaks so highly of Fischer in that very same article.

Lasker used psychology as an art form. This has been used in every world championship since. Excluding Alekhine, Tal, and Fischer, what has any WC done?

The candidates cycle is a system employed by a (corrupt) organization which didn't exist back then. If the British had nuclear weapons, the Americans would have never gained their independence. Now you can't blame WWI, lack of funding, and other uncontrollable events on Lasker.

Just to enforce Fischer's sentiment, Morphy played some horrible positional games, but there was no knowledge of how to exploit this back then. Comparing years past with the easy environment that, as Kasparov says, today's trained dogs enjoy, is a complete fallacy.