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Chessville
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Capablanca was world chess champion from 1921-1927. His domination of the game ran from 1919 through 1927 when he lost all to Alekhine. Even after he suffered a mild stroke in 1938, he only lost 3 games that year! He holds a record that has yet to be beaten: in 248 games, he lost 19. He learned chess at the age of four by watching his father play and in 1901, at the age of 12, he beat Juan Corzo, the Cuban champion. Capablanca was regarded as the most naturally talented chess player anyone had ever seen. He was educated in America, studied engineering at Columbia University and spent much of his free time playing masters at the Manhattan Chess Club in New York City, where he achieved a sensational win in a match against US Champion Frank Marshall, crushing him by 8 wins to 1, with 14 draws. This in 1909 - when he was 20 years old. Frank Marshall had unsuccessfully played Emmanuel Lasker in a World Championship match only two years earlier.
Also in 1911 Capablanca challenged Lasker for the world championship. Lasker agreed to the challenge but imposed 17 conditions for a future match. Capablanca disagreed with these conditions and the match did not take place. Capablanca secured a job in the Cuban Foreign Office in September of 1913. His job was to play chess ; a goodwill ambassador so to speak. Play chess. For many years, he was the most famous Cuban alive. From October of 1913 to March of 1914 Capablanca traveled to Europe on his way to the Consulate at St Petersburg. He played many exhibition games against Europe's leading masters. He scored 19 wins, 4 draws, and 1 loss during that period. While at a tournament in St. Petersburg in 1914, Capablanca met Lasker over the chessboard for the first time. Capablanca took the lead by one and a half points in the preliminaries but lost to Lasker in the finals. Capablanca finished second to Lasker with a score of 13 points to Lasker's 13½.
The war interrupted European chess for four years and after the war Lasker's heart was not really in chess. His efforts to secure proper financial rewards for chess masters had failed and great players were still dying in poverty. He agreed to defend his title against Capablanca in 1920 but resigned his title in favor of the challenger as he no longer felt like struggling. He told Capablanca, "You have earned the title not by the formality of a challenge, but by your brilliant mastery." However, there was pressure from the chess world for Lasker to play Capablanca and when Capablanca found sponsors in Cuba who were prepared to finance the match for twenty-five thousand dollars (of which half would go to Lasker whether he won or lost) he decided to go ahead with the match. However, Lasker maintained that as he had resigned the title already it was he who was challenger to Capablanca. In Havana in 1921 Lasker resigned the match on grounds of ill health. Capablanca was now the new World Champion. Capablanca married Gloria Simoni Beautucourt in December 1921. They had a son, Jose Raul, in 1923 and a daughter, Gloria, in 1925. His home life was secure but there was an uprising brewing in the chess world. The early part of the 20th century produced an increasing number of strong chess players. It was felt that the world champion should not be able to evade challenges to his title as has been done in the past. In London in 1922 the greatest players of the time including Alekhine, Bogolyubov, Maroczy, Reti, Rubinstein, Tartakower and Vidmar, met to discuss rules for the conduct of future world championships. One of the conditions, which was imposed by Capablanca, was that the challenger would have to raise at least ten thousand dollars for the prize money. An amount of 4% inflation indexed dollars in 2007 would be $2.58 million! These were the so-called 'London Rules'. That same year, Capablanca gave a simultaneous exhibition against 103 opponents, the largest in history up to that time, and scored 102 wins and 1 draw, losing none. In the following years, Rubinstein and Nimzowitsch challenged Capablanca but were unable to raise the necessary ten thousand dollars. Alekhine's challenge was backed by a group of Argentinean businessmen and the president of Argentina, who guaranteed the funds proposed a title match. However, Capablanca imposed another condition. He replied that if Alekhine wanted to be considered as a challenger then he would have to play in a tournament in New York. The winner of this tournament would play Capablanca in the next world championship. This outraged Alekhine and his sponsors. The World Champion match was finally held in Buenos Aires in 1927. The first to win six games would be the new World Champion. This match was the longest World Champion match there had ever been. It lasted thirty-four games and seventy-three days but eventually Alekhine achieved a score of six wins to three to secure the title of World Champion. The stresses of this match led to a personal and professional hatred between Alekhine and Capablanca. Alekhine began refusing to play in the same tournaments asCapablanca. The Nottingham tournament of 1936, when the two men did meet, they were never seen seated together at the board for more than a few seconds. Each man made his move and then got up and walked round.
Upon Alekhine's death four years later it was discovered that he had been working on a collection of Capablanca's best games. The introduction Alekhine wrote said, "With his death, we have lost a very great chess genius whose like we shall never see again." It seems that even in death Cabablanca's final victory was over the heart of his old adversary. Such is how legends are born.
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In
1911, on the insistence of Marshall, Capablanca played in San Sebastian,
Spain at one of the strongest tournaments in the world at that time.
He astounded everyone by taking first place at this tournament with a score
of 6 wins, 7 draws and 1 loss, ahead of Rubinstein, Schlechter and
Nimzovitsch. This was his first major tournament, an achievement he
shares only with Pillsbury.
In
the ten years after this tournament (from 1914 to 1924) he lost only one
game and the chess world was beginning to think he was invincible.
However, Capablanca had to wait another seven years until he could prove he
was the world champion.
Capablanca
was happily kibitzing a skittles game at the Manhattan Chess Club in New
York on the 7th of March in 1942, when he collapsed from a stroke. He
died the next morning at the Mount Sinai Hospital.
