Emanuel Lasker: The Life of a Chess Master

Emanuel Lasker: The Life of a Chess Master

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Customer Reviews

A Biography of a great man, mathematician , philosopher and chess master !!

Reviewed by Alvaro Ojeda, 2007-11-17


This book is great in all senses: the information about the man and the epoch, the chess tournaments, the life of without doubt the greatest chess master ever, and probably he will remain insuperable, because he was not "only" a chess world champion, but also a "real" philosopher and mathematician in all the sense of those terms. So is sad when you hear that he has been called "a chess-coffee master" or something like that... ¿How dare them? His triumphs in life as a whole are innumerables, and in chess, without equal... "In august 1936 (Nottingham 1936), he once again amazed the chess world by a performance no one could possibly expect of him... achieved what seemed a miracle at the beginning of the tournament: he had caught up with the leaders every one of whom ranked among the world's top-players and was by decades his juniors (Botvinnik, Capablanca, Euwe, Fine, Reshevsky and Alekhine)... To have maintained his place among those leaders at the age of 68 was, perhaps, one of the greatest achievements in Lasker's long career..." (pgs. 297,299). This book, moreover, is beautifully written.

This is a nice collection of Lasker's games.

Reviewed by Anonymous, 2001-11-18

This book is a combination of a biography and game collection. There are 102 games in the book. The games are given in descriptive notation. The annotations were collected. Many of them are from the original book of the tournament that they were played in, however there are alot of games annotated by Reinfeld and Reti. Most of the annotations are light, and there is only one diagram per game. For about 60% of the tournaments that Lasker played in, full results are given. The theory in the book that Lasker played pyschological chess was Reti's theory.
The biography side of the book is pretty interesting. For the sake of those who aren't Yiddish speakers, the term 'chammer', which appears in the beginning of the book, really should be 'chammore', and means donkey. For some reason, this is the Yiddish phrase used to insult someone of less than average intelligence.

An Excellent Biography and Lots of Great Games

Reviewed by Anonymous, 2000-07-25

Emanuel Lasker was one of the four or five greatest chess players of all time, an outstanding player of many other games, and an outstanding mathematician and philosopher. The biography is a good read, but the games alone are worth the price of the book. They are in descriptive notation. I know a lot of players don't like descriptive notation, but there is a mountain of low-priced classic chess literature in descriptive notation, of which this book is just one of the many outstanding examples. Take my advice: Learn descriptive and read the classics. You won't regret the experience.

A great book about the greatest player

Reviewed by Anonymous, 1999-01-06

Another Dover reprint! You know I rate Dover books highly. This one is top notch too, reaching their usual high standards for binding etc. The original print is retained which is good as the diagrams from the hardcover edition were excellent. [For computer users they are the Hastings font ] The translation to English was done by Heinrich Fraenkel ('Assiac') and is excellent. The games are typical of Lasker - all fighting games ( there are losses) and all show his grim determination to win. But the best part is the biography. Lasker was a highly intelligent man, who only played chess out of necessity. We are treated to a description of his youth, his relationship with his brother, Berthold, who became a famous Doctor. But the real story is his romancing of Martha his wife. Great human interest, great chess, and we also get the crosstables for the events that Lasker played in. A must buy for all players no matter their strength.