World Chess Championship 1908
| photo |
 |
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|---|---|---|
| Emanuel Lasker | Siegbert Tarrasch | |
| nation |
.svg)
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| status | Defending champion | challenger |
| Age | 39 years | 46 years |
At the world chess championship in 1908 , world champion Emanuel Lasker successfully defended his title against Siegbert Tarrasch .
prehistory
Shortly after Lasker's victory in the revenge fight in 1896/97 against Wilhelm Steinitz , Tarrasch challenged Lasker. But Lasker had refused. A competition that had already been agreed for autumn 1904 could not take place because Tarrasch had injured himself in an accident.
Tarrasch had proven his outstanding strength through various successes, such as the clear victory (+8 = 8 −1) in the match against the challenger in the World Cup fight in 1907 , Frank Marshall (1905) and the victory in the tournament in Ostend in the summer of 1907 .
Organization and rules
The competition threatened to fail because of Lasker's financial demands. So he asked for a fixed fee regardless of the result and finally received it, while Tarrasch waived it. The Lord Mayors of Düsseldorf and Munich , Wilhelm Marx and Wilhelm von Borscht , raised larger funds; therefore the competition, financed mainly by donations, took place in these cities. The winner should be the one who would have won eight games first. The prize was 4,000 marks, while the loser received compensation of 2,500 marks. Lasker also received a gaming fee of 7,500 marks. Tarrasch waived a fee and only played for the prize money. Proceeds from any entrance fees were initially used to cover the deficit guaranteed by Tarrasch and then in the amount of up to 500 marks for the costs of the German Chess Federation. Excess income was then distributed evenly between the two players. Before the competition, both players paid a penalty of 2,000 marks each, which would have expired if a player had resigned and was refunded after the first game.
The start of the competition was scheduled for Monday, August 17, 1908 at 2:45 p.m. in Düsseldorf and took place in Munich on August 31, 1908. If a game was ended on August 26, 1908, a new game should not be started on August 27, but one should be played in Wiesbaden. Each week, the game was played six days in the afternoon and six hours in the evening, with no further game starting on the same day that another game was finished. Each player was entitled to a vacation day five times, which had to be communicated at least one hour before the start of the game. Playing times in Düsseldorf were from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. on the first day, otherwise from 12:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. and from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
With a credit for the time saved, a reflection period of one hour was agreed for every 15 trains. In the case of four hours of uninterrupted play, the first time control took place after 30 moves, whereby the timeout resulted in the game being lost. The arbitrator was jointly elected by both parties Otto Rosenfeld, chairman of the Stuttgart chess club, who accepted the election. The 50-move rule was expressly mentioned as point 12 of the contract . Hanging games were not allowed to be analyzed or viewed in the presence of third parties . "Present" was defined as "the active participation of a recognized good player". If there was sufficient evidence, a breach of this prohibition resulted in the loss of the game. The ownership of the parts was according to the contract with the players, with Tarrasch renounced his favor of the German Chess League. Otherwise the "rules of the game of the German Chess Federation, printed in Ranneforth's chess calendar" applied.
At each venue a second had to be selected by each player, whereby up to two opposing seconds could be rejected. The second had the task of "establishing the facts in the event of differences of opinion". He also had to check before each round that the chess clock was set correctly. Tarrasch chose the Nuremberg physician Heinrich Renner as the second for the entire competition. Lasker chose Mr. Appun from Coburg in Düsseldorf and Mr. Schropp from Munich alternately and Mr. Kollmann from Munich.
preparation
Before the duel, Siegbert Tarrasch took a bathing trip to Ostend . A competition for three consulting games against players from the Cologne Chess Club (civil society), which Tarrasch played "en passant" on June 7, 1908, Tarrasch lost in only one draw .
course
The competition lasted from August 17th to September 30th. The first four games were played in the Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, the rest in Munich. After five games Tarrasch was already behind with 1: 4, a deficit that he could not make up. The final point of the clear 3-8 defeat was the last game in which Tarrasch overlooked an elementary turn and lost a figure.
Tarrasch attributed the early deficit to the short preparation time. A fortnight beforehand, in contrast to his opponent, he did not know whether the competition would take place. In addition, Tarrasch said that he did not like the “sea winds” of Düsseldorf.
World Chess Championship 1908 1 2 3 4th 5 6th 7th 8th 9 10 11 12 13 14th 15th 16 Victories Points Lasker 1 1 0 1 1 ½ 1 ½ ½ 0 1 0 1 ½ ½ 1 8th 10½ Tarrash 0 0 1 0 0 ½ 0 ½ ½ 1 0 1 0 ½ ½ 0 3 5½
Reception in the press
According to Max Hofschläger, it had long been known "that the gentlemen's opponents did not love one another", which is why the chess players split up into Tarrasch's and Lasker's supporters, while the competition was also followed by many non-chess players out of sporting interests. The tournament and duel results of Tarrasch and Lasker were "equal", so that Tarrasch was considered Lasker's most dangerous opponent. Regarding the actual competition, Hofschläger wrote that Tarrasch showed the better game in the eighth to twelfth game, but had no real chances of winning at this point due to the large difference in points. Through a mountain excursion lasting several days, Lasker gathered new strength after the twelfth game, although never showing a form low, in order to win a queen's gambit in the thirteenth game . Tarrasch had defended himself and had "the reins in his hands" in the fourteenth game, but after 15 hours and 119 moves he only achieved a draw despite attempts to win. After another draw, Lasker decided the duel for himself in the sixteenth round. Hofschläger said that Tarrasch would have had a good chance if he had played from the start like in the second half of the competition. As Tarrasch himself remarked in an interview, there was a lack of practice. Nevertheless, Lasker was the stronger player who had to defeat Tarrasch.
In a report on the competition at the beginning of 1909, however, the Wiener Schachzeitung stated that the competition was still "the subject of numerous discussions" and printed a competition analysis by Dr. Falk, who headed the chess section of the Moscow German newspaper . Falk stated that the competition “did not meet the expectations of chess fans”, which was due to the performance of the players. Lasker's type of game, which wants to simplify complicated positions, is "not interesting", and the time controls also play a part in avoiding unnecessary expenditure of time and choosing "clear, luminous positions [...] rather than intricate positions". Tarrasch sometimes forgot the time to think about it and got lost in complicated variants. In the aftermath of the article, Falk went into errors in the individual games. At the end of his article, Falk prophesied that due to Lasker's high demands, another competition soon would be ruled out and that the duel had “at least shown the realization that Lasker is no longer the old one, and that among the numerous crowd of young, aspiring chess talents, the future will soon be Defeater Laskers will be sought. "
consequences
After this unexpectedly high defeat, Tarrasch could no longer build on his successes before the World Cup fight and from then on he could only be found in tournaments in the defeated field. Lasker played two more world championship duels in 1910, against Carl Schlechter and Dawid Janowski , and then until 1921, when he lost his world title to the Cuban José Raúl Capablanca , no more world championship fights.
literature
- Siegbert Tarrasch: The Lasker-Tarrasch chess competition for the world championship in August-September 1908. Publisher of Veit & Comp. Leipzig 1908.
- Raymund Stolze : Contested Crown - The duels of the world chess champions from Steinitz to Kasparow . Sportverlag, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-328-00526-9 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Tarrasch, pp. 24-26.
- ↑ a b Max Hofschläger: Chess competition for the World Cup . Hamburger Nachrichten 1908. Reprinted in: Wiener Schachzeitung 12/1908, pp. 370–377.
- ↑ a b c d e Treaty between the German Chess Federation, e. V., represented by its 1st chairman, Dr. Gebhart-Coburg and, his secretary J. Schenzel-Nürnberg, on the one hand, and Dr. Em. Lasker from New York and Dr. S. Tarrasch from Nuremberg. Dusseldorf. August 17, 1908. Reprinted in: Tarrasch, pp. 21-23.
- ↑ Tarrasch, p. 22, footnote 1 to point 15 of the contract
- ↑ Tarrasch, p. 23, footnote 1 to contract point addendum 5
- ↑ Georg Marco (editor-in-chief): Wiener Schachzeitung , issue “December and Supplement 1908” No. 12/1908. Pp. 361-370.
- ↑ A hundred years ago in Düsseldorf: Lasker and Tarrasch played here in 1908 . PDF file in the kwabc.org portal , accessed on November 22, 2013
- ^ Friedrich-Karl Hebeker: A hundred years ago in Düsseldorf: Lasker leads 3: 1 against Tarrasch! In: Düsseldorfer Schach , Volume 52, No. 531/532, August / September 2008, p. 6, PDF file in the schach region-duesseldorf.de portal , accessed on November 22, 2013
- ↑ The Lasker-Tarrasch competition . In: Wiener Schachzeitung , No. 1/1909. Pp. 1-4.