Background
Emanuel Lasker was born in Berlinchen, Germany on December 24, 1868.
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Emanuel Lasker was born in Berlinchen, Germany on December 24, 1868.
He learned chess from his brother at the age of twelve. Although he studied mathematics at university, he found himself playing chess for a living because it was difficult for a Jew to get a position at a German university.
At the age of twenty he had earned the title of chess master and entered an international competition in Amsterdam, where he played a brilliant game against J. H. Bauer. Tournaments that followed in England found him easily defeating the leading British players.
Though an extremely skilled and crafty player, Lasker advocated a philosophy of justice in chess that held that he had no right to win a game if his opponent had not made mistakes or broken rules.
In the early 1900s Lasker settled in New York City, where he began to publish Lasker's Chess Magazine and edited a chess column for the New York Evening Post. Although lacking the eccentricities that characterized other chess champions, he was known for never wearing a watch, claiming that he did not want to be enslaved by time.
An excellent mathematician, Lasker taught advanced mathematics at several universities and wrote many articles on various philosophical and social issues. He was insistent about being adequately paid for his chess matches, yet, during the German inflation of 1923 the nest egg he had set aside for himself when playing against Capablanca was completely dissipated.
In 1893 he won the New York Tourney and set a world record with thirteen straight wins. In 1894 he played for the world championship against William Steinitz, who had held the world title for twenty-seven years, and defeated him then and again in 1896-1897.
He defended the world title several times, until he lost it to the Cuban player José Capablanca in 1921, although he later defeated Capablanca at tournaments in New York and Moscow.
