"While combinations call for an unexpected reappraisal of values, positional play, on the other hand, emphasises and strengthens them."

<A game played by men of equal strength, if played accurately, will end in a draw, and it is apt to be dull.>

-- Emanuel Lasker

By SHELBY LYMAN

Although Emanuel Lasker is best-known as the chess champion who held the world title for 27 years, he was also a mathematician and philosopher.

He found in chess the inspiration for a philosophy of struggle, which he expounded in a small tome entitled Kampf.

For Lasker, struggle was a repetitive process in which protagonists, through cooperation and competition, clarified and resolved issues. The protagonists could be man versus man or man versus nature.

Although Lasker, a German Jew, enthusiastically sided with his homeland during World War I, he also found merit in the cause of its adversaries. In a limited sense, it seems, war for Lasker was a chess game writ large.

I am reminded of the sessions of speed chess I used to play with a skilled friend. During each 14-minute game, we would spare no effort to beat each other. Afterward, we would do a ritual post-mortem, during which we reviewed the moves, shared ideas and further explored the game's possibilities.

This shared effort and combat produced an exhilaration that seems to support Lasker's progressive notion of dialectical struggle.

In an age of globalization, in which overcoming differences and finding successful means of cooperation are likely to be necessary for survival, Lasker's concept might have a new relevance in domestic and international politics.

<In an age of globalization, in which overcoming differences and finding successful means of cooperation are likely to be necessary for survival, Lasker's concept might have a new relevance in domestic and international politics.>

Or old relevance. Many of the philosophical battles of the past have probably strengthened the world greatly since new ideas were forged in the fire of intense resistance and scrutiny.

<For Lasker, struggle was a repetitive process in which protagonists, through cooperation and competition, clarified and resolved issues. The protagonists could be man versus man or man versus nature.>

This struggle has always been useful in the corporate world too - bitter battles between departments in the same company force the business to adopt optimize prices, compensation, profit levels, and investment levels. Whereas a company of people who all agreed about these issues would do poorly because there would be no test of the ideas.

By SHELBY LYMAN

How strong a player was Emanuel Lasker, who was world champion for 27 years (1894-1921)?

A young Bobby Fischer obscured Lasker's legacy when he wrote in 1964 that he "was a coffeehouse player" who "knew nothing about openings and didn't understand positional chess."

For many, Fischer's famous statement has been the final word. But he apparently reversed himself later when he told fellow grandmaster Pal Benko that "Lasker was a truly great player."

A measure of Lasker's ability was his performance at age 67 in the 1935 Moscow International Tournament. He finished in third place, only a half-point behind Mikhail Botvinnik and Salo Flohr but ahead of Jose Capablanca, the acknowledged chess genius who had wrested away Lasker's world title 14 years earlier.

Capablanca regarded Lasker -- even as the latter neared 70 -- as the most dangerous player in the world in a single game. No other contemporary, he thought, surpassed the former world champion in his ability to evaluate a position and find the correct strategy.

Lasker was notable for his lack of fear and his willingness to take on new challenges. Siegbert Tarrasch wrote: "Lasker occasionally loses a game, but he never loses his head."

His friend Albert Einstein offered an impressive non-chess tribute: "I shall remember with gratitude the pleasing conversations I enjoyed with that incessantly eager, truly independent and yet most modest of men."

<I keep on fighting as long as my opponent can make a mistake.>

-- Em. Lasker

"Steinitz always looked for the objectively right move. Tarrasch always claimed to have found the objectively right move.

Lasker did nothing of the kind. He never bothered about what might or might not be the objectively right move; all he cared for was to find whatever move was likely to be most embarrassing for the specific person sitting on the other side of the board."

– Jacques Hannak

"Lasker won so many games from bad positions that he was accused by at least one opponent of witchcraft, by another of hypnotism and by many more as being grossly over-endowed with good luck.

In fact, he often deliberately courted difficult positions because he understood the mental stress that can be built up in the mind of an attacker when he meets with a resolute defense. By building up an opponent's hopes and then placing a trail of difficulties in his path, Lasker would induce feelings of doubt, confusion and finally panic."

Bill Hartston

"Lasker understood better than anyone that the true nature of the struggle in chess was not an objective search for the truth, but a psychological battle against both oneself and the opponent, in conditions of extreme uncertainty."

– Bill Hartston

"In life, as in chess, Lasker was a fighter."

– Fred Reinfeld

"It is remarkable, and deserves special mention that the great masters, such as Pillsbury, Maroczy and Janowsky play against Lasker as though hypnotized."

– Georg Marco

"Often his opponents (and annotators too) would still be wondering long afterwards where the game had actually been lost. Advantages seemed to disappear mysteriously when facing Lasker!"

– Richard Forster

"It is no easy matter to reply correctly to Lasker's bad moves."

Thanks for the quotes!

< The losing side has the greater part of his army in positions where they had no bearing whatever upon the questions at issue. They might have been just as well anywhere else but on the board. >