World Chess Championship 1910 (Lasker – Schlechter)

Opponents of the 1910 World Chess Championship (I)
Portraits
Portraits	Emanuel Lasker	Carl Schlechter
nation	German Empire	Austrian Empire
status	Defending champion	challenger
Age	41 years	35 years

At the 1910 World Chess Championship (Lasker-Schlechter) , the reigning world chess champion Emanuel Lasker successfully defended his title against his challenger Carl Schlechter .

prehistory

Carl Schlechter was considered a master of positional play. His games had an unusually high draw rate of almost 50% for the time.

Lasker had already accepted Schlechter's challenge after his competition against Tarrasch .

Organization and rules

The match was scheduled for ten games. The first five of them were to be played in Vienna, the following in Berlin. With a 5: 5 Lasker should keep his title.

The exact regulations of the match are still controversial today. The assumption is very widespread that, under the negotiated conditions, Schlechter needed a two-point lead to win, which would explain his risky game in the last game (which he ultimately lost). Other sources indicate that if he won, Schlechter would have had to fight a rematch against Lasker to win the title; or they doubt that it was even a world championship fight.

However, a report by Lasker for the New York Evening Post shortly before the match ended contradicts these theses:

"The match with Schlechter is nearing its end and it appears probable that for the first time in my life I shall be the loser. If that should happen a good man will have won the world championship. "

- Emanuel Lasker after Larry Evans, 1910

course

The match lasted from January 7th to February 10th. The first four games ended in a draw, in the fifth game there was a sensation when Lasker played for profit with pawn plus, but Schlechter suddenly entered his position with queen and rook and defeated him.

In Berlin Lasker tried four games in vain to make up for his deficit. In order to avoid a draw against the defensive artist Schlechter, Lasker resorted to daring maneuvers in the last game, and he managed to equalize. The game is described in detail in the article Lasker - Schlechter, Berlin 1910, 10th competition game .

World Chess Championship 1910
	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th	9	10	Victories	Points
Lasker	½	½	½	½	0	½	½	½	½	1	1	5
Worse	½	½	½	½	1	½	½	½	½	0	1	5

literature

Raymund Stolze: Contested Crown - The duels of the world chess champions from Steinitz to Kasparow. Sportverlag, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-328-00526-9 .
Thomas Glavinic : Carl Haffner's love for a tie. Novel. dtv, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-423-13425-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Harold C. Schonberg : The Grand Masters of Chess. Who they were, how they played and brought the royal game to perfection. From the American English by Jan Holthusen. Book guild Gutenberg, Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3-7632-1944-7 , p. 122.
^ The Most Infamous World Championship Game. January 31, 2007.

[GM1-1] Harold C. Schonberg : The Grand Masters of Chess. Who they were, how they played and brought the royal game to perfection. From the American English by Jan Holthusen. Book guild Gutenberg, Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3-7632-1944-7 , p. 122.

[2] The Most Infamous World Championship Game. January 31, 2007.