Emanuel Lasker (German pronunciation: [eˈmaːnuɛl ˈlaskɐ] ; December 24, 1868 – January 11, 1941) was a German chess player, mathematician, and philosopher. He was the second World Chess Champion, holding the title for 27 years, from 1894 to 1921, the longest reign of any officially recognised World Chess Champion, winning 6 World Chess Championships. In his prime, Lasker was one of the most dominant champions.
His contemporaries used to say that Lasker used a "psychological" approach to the game, and even that he sometimes deliberately played inferior moves to confuse opponents. 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. Lasker knew contemporary analyses of openings well but disagreed with many of them. He published chess magazines and five chess books, but later players and commentators found it difficult to draw lessons from his methods.
Lasker made contributions to the development of other games. He was a first-class contract bridge player and wrote about bridge, Go, and his own invention, Lasca. His books about games presented a problem that is still considered notable in the mathematical analysis of card games. Lasker was a research mathematician who was known for his contributions to commutative algebra, which included proving the primary decomposition of the ideals of polynomial rings. In addition to his better-known works, he also produced philosophical writings and co-authored a drama, both of which received limited contemporary attention.
Emanuel Lasker was born on December 24, 1868, at Berlinchen in Neumark (now Barlinek in Poland), the son of a Jewish cantor. At the age of eleven he was sent to study mathematics in Berlin, where he lived with his brother Berthold, eight years his senior, who taught him how to play chess. Berthold was among the world's top ten players in the early 1890s. To supplement their income, Emanuel played chess and card games for small stakes, especially at the Café Kaiserhof.
Lasker won the Café Kaiserhof's annual Winter tournament 1888/89 and the Hauptturnier A ("second division" tournament) at the sixth DSB Congress (German Chess Federation's congress), held in Breslau. Winning the Hauptturnier earned Lasker the title of "master". The candidates were divided into two groups of ten. The top four in each group competed in a final. Lasker won his section, with 2½ points more than his nearest rival. However, scores were reset to 0 for the final. With two rounds to go, Lasker trailed the leader, Viennese amateur von Feierfeil, by 1½ points. Lasker won both of his final games, while von Feierfeil lost in the penultimate round (being mated in 121 moves after the position was reconstructed incorrectly following an adjournment) and drew in the last round. The two players were now tied. Lasker won a playoff and garnered the master title. This enabled him to play in master-level tournaments and thus launched his chess career.
Lasker finished second in an international tournament at Amsterdam, ahead of Mason and Gunsberg. In spring 1892, he won two tournaments in London, the second and stronger of these without losing a game. At New York City in 1893, he won all thirteen games, one of the few times in chess history that a player has achieved a perfect score in a significant tournament.
His record in matches was equally impressive: At Berlin in 1890 he drew a short playoff 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).
In 1892 Lasker founded the first of his chess magazines, The London Chess Fortnightly, which was published from August 15, 1892, to July 30, 1893. In the second quarter of 1893, there was a gap of ten weeks between issues, allegedly because of problems with the printer. Shortly after its last issue, Lasker traveled to the US, where he spent the next two years.
Lasker challenged Siegbert Tarrasch, who had won three consecutive strong international tournaments (Breslau 1889, Manchester 1890, and Dresden 1892), to a match. Tarrasch declined, stating that Lasker should first prove his mettle by attempting to win one or two major international events.
Rebuffed by Tarrasch, Lasker challenged the reigning World Champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, to a match for the title. Initially Lasker wanted to play for US$5,000 a side, and a match was agreed to at stakes of $3,000 a side, but Steinitz agreed to a series of reductions when Lasker found it difficult to raise the money. The final figure was $2,000, which was less than for some of Steinitz's earlier matches (the final combined stake of $4,000 would be equivalent to $150,000 in 2025). The match was played in 1894 at venues in New York, Philadelphia, and Montreal. Steinitz had previously declared he would win without doubt, so it came as a shock when Lasker won the first game. Steinitz won the second game and maintained the balance through the sixth. However, Lasker won all the games from the seventh to the eleventh, and Steinitz asked for a week's rest. When the match resumed, Steinitz looked in better shape and won the 13th and 14th games. Lasker struck back in the 15th and 16th, and Steinitz did not compensate for his losses in the middle of the match. Hence Lasker won convincingly with ten wins, five losses, and four draws. On May 26, Lasker thus became the second formally recognized World Chess Champion and confirmed his title by beating Steinitz even more convincingly in their rematch in 1896–97 (ten wins, two losses, and five draws).
Influential players and journalists belittled the 1894 match both before and after it took place. Lasker's difficulty in getting backing may have been caused by hostile pre-match comments from Gunsberg and Leopold Hoffer, who had long been a bitter enemy of Steinitz. One of the complaints was that Lasker had never played the other two members of the top four, Siegbert Tarrasch and Mikhail Chigorin – although Tarrasch had rejected a challenge from Lasker in 1892, publicly telling him to go and win an international tournament first. After the match some commentators, notably Tarrasch, said Lasker had won mainly because Steinitz was old (58 in 1894).
Emanuel Lasker answered these criticisms by creating an even more impressive playing record. He came third at Hastings 1895 (where he may have been suffering from the after-effects of typhoid fever), behind Pillsbury and Chigorin but ahead of Tarrasch and Steinitz, and then won first prizes at very strong tournaments in St Petersburg 1895–96 (an elite, 4-player tournament, ahead of Steinitz, Pillsbury and Chigorin), Nuremberg (1896), London (1899) and Paris (1900); tied for second at Cambridge Springs 1904, and tied for first at the Chigorin Memorial in St Petersburg 1909.
Later, at St Petersburg (1914), he overcame a 1½-point deficit to finish ahead of the rising stars, Capablanca and Alexander Alekhine, who later became the next two World Champions. For decades chess writers have reported that Tsar Nicholas II of Russia conferred the title of Grandmaster of Chess upon each of the five finalists at St Petersburg 1914 (Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall), but chess historian Edward Winter has questioned this, stating that the earliest known sources supporting this story were published in 1940 and 1942.
Matches against Marshall and Tarrasch
Lasker's match record was as impressive between his 1896–97 rematch with Steinitz and 1914: he won all but one of his normal matches, and three of those were convincing defenses of his title.
In 1906 Lasker and Géza Maróczy agreed to terms for a World Championship, but the arrangements could not be finalised, and the match never took place.
Lasker's first world championship match since 1897 was against Frank Marshall in the World Chess Championship 1907. Despite his aggressive style, Marshall could not win a single game, losing eight and drawing seven (final score: 11½–3½).