History is written by the victors, and never more so than in chess where games were often portrayed as an inexorable journey to the inevitable conclusion.

Tarrasch would have it that even the loser's good moves were some sort of fluke rather than a resource he had seen and relied upon several moves earlier.

It is a bit odd, but as <Granny O Doul> says it was used as recently as Karpov vs Korchnoi, 1981, and even after that. Lasker wouldn't have played anything suspect, of course.

Here is what Lasker said about the position after ...Nb7:

<We have now come to a critical stage. Black's pieces have retired into safety, ready, with one single move, to occupy positions of importance. White, on the contrary, has the field to himself, but he can do nothing for the moment, as there is no tangible object of attack. Various efforts have been made to show that White has the superior position. I do not believe White has any advantage, and am rather inclined to attribute the greater vitality to to the party who has kept his forces a little back. >

Tarrasch expresses a very different view in the tournament book: <If a Knight has made no fewer than four of the first eight opening moves in order to find itself afterward on the unbelievable post of b7, that seems to me so laughable that I cannot understand how this method of development can have been accepted as normal after many decades.>