Everybody has seen this, but I want to say the mating net. 26... hxg6 27. Rh3+ Nh6 28. Rxh6#.

Anyhow, I think Lasker earlier indicated he wasn't interested in an inferior queenless middlegame since he rejected Capablanca's 12 ... Qb4+.

Reti's claim that Lasker deliberately made unsound moves is stupid nonsense.

<Alekhine was obviously not the man to try that with....>

Going into this game (played when Lasker was 65) his record against Alekhine was +3 -0 =4. He must have been doing something right.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/ches...

Lasker suffered his only losses to Alekhine, Nimzowitsch and Bogoljubov in this very tournament, come to think of it.

I. About the opening stage. - A. Alekhine, "Alexander Alekhine's Best Games", algebraic ed., London 1996, p. 103: "A very safe, but harmless move [11. Ne4], for which I had marked predilection during a certain period of my career, including the Capablanca match. Now [1937] I have come to the conclusion that the old 11. 0-0, although not extremely promising, still offers more fighting chances than the Knight move." - I not sure about this. After 11. Ne4 N5f6! 12. Nxf6+! Qxf6 13. 0-0 e5, White gets the better game with 14. d5!? (based on a Tarrasch idea for a similar position).

Reti's claim that Lasker deliberately made unsound moves is stupid nonsense. >

What a brilliant exposé of Keypusher.

I think Reti had a point, look for example at the move f5 in Lasker vs Capablanca, 1914

Besides, it is often said by players better then even mr Keypusher himself that Lasker was a psychological player who occasionally would tempt his opponent into unsound attacks by second rate moves.>

And a brilliant exposé of <sitzkrieg>! Good to have you back, and pray do not descend into trollery as you did before.

Fine wrote that Morphy was obsessed with women's shoes. Tarrasch seems to have thought that every popular opening or defense had either been refuted or rendered harmless at one time or another. Fischer thought that the Elders of Zion teamed up with the Bekins Moving & Storage Company to steal his property. Worse, he wrote that Lasker was a coffee-house player. So being a stronger chessplayer than keypusher does not confer immunity from stupid nonsense.

I do not believe that Lasker made second-rate moves to tempt his opponents into unsound attacks, but of course such a claim cannot be proved or disproved, absent a signed confession from Lasker (which as far as I know was not forthcoming). But Reti made a much stronger claim: that Lasker deliberately made <unsound> i.e. bad moves. It is precisely that claim that is stupid nonsense.

In any case, 12. f5 in the Capablanca game is a very poor choice to support the <Lasker made bad moves on purpose> theory. Here is what Kramnik said about it:

<Lasker realised that the e5-square could be weakened because it was difficult to exploit. And then they started talking about his psychological approach! It had nothing to do with psychology. Lasker grasped a deep concept, which is being automatically employed now: he gave up the e5-square and "fenced in" the c8-bishop. That's why it was not a matter of psychology; Lasker had a very deep positional understanding.>

And here is what Tarrasch wrote about it in 1914:

<Extraordinarily surprising and very elegant! The move prevents the further development of the knight, hems in the bishop and opens to his own the square f4 for attack. Besides, White thereby takes possession of the weak point e6. In exchange, the pawn on e4 is backward and the square e5 becomes weak, but this is of little importance.>

So, both modern and ancient doyennes of "correct" play, far from considering this move some sort of psychological stroke, applaud it on positional grounds. But that isn't all. It appears that Lasker had a particular predilection for the move f4-f5, and employed it repeatedly. See Game Collection: Lasker's Secret Weapon. Makes it rather unlikely that he picked it to unsettle Capablanca, don't you think?