Chess greats

Past greats
CHESS
By QUAH SENG SUN

It is important to recognise the past champions who have elevated chess standards to where they are today.

KIESERITZKY, Staunton, Capablanca … do any of these names ring a bell? No? You are not alone.

About two years ago, I was visiting one of the chess academies in the Klang Valley with some friends and we saw the walls lined with posters of former world chess champions. We reached a consensus that the youth of today would probably not be able to recognise the champions of yesteryears.

You may think that it’s unimportant to know all this old stuff but I would disagree with you. I would say that anyone who doesn’t know chess history is missing out on a lot of colour, as well as chess.

All the personalities of the past have actually shaped the chess we play today. Even now, great international-level players continue to draw their inspiration from those in the past. I don’t see why we, at the grassroots level, cannot appreciate them too.

José Raúl Capablanca

Take Capablanca, for example. He was the world champion from 1921 until 1927. He was very formidable at the chess board and had an aura of invincibility even before he became world champion.

It was said that in his first nine years of international play from 1909 to 1918, he played 155 games with 100 wins, 46 draws and only four losses. In the next 20 years, he won 191 games and lost 24. From 1914 to 1924, he played 126 games and lost only four.

Then, at the 1924 New York tournament, one of the great tournaments of the past, he lost to Richard Reti. Everyone was shocked. So unexpected was the loss that the New York Times reported the event with the headline: Capablanca Loses 1st Game Since 1914.

In his entire playing career, he played more than 700 games and lost only 35. No wonder he was dubbed “The Chess Machine” by his admirers.

Capablanca was suave, he was a ladies’ man, and he enjoyed life. Certainly, this chess player from Cuba was unlike the stereotype of his chess contemporaries.

Back to the NYT. In 1921, after Capablanca had beaten Emmanuel Lasker for the championship title, the newspaper had this to say:

“In appearance, the new champion is utterly unlike the popular conception of a chess player. The beard, the spectacles, the furrowed brow, the rounded shoulders, the clouds of smoke, the careless attire – all these are absent. The new champion looks more like a successful businessman than a chess player.

“Everything interests him. Except when playing or preparing for play, he forgets chess and enjoys life as any healthy, lively-minded young man of 32 should who can afford it.”

That’s Capablanca for you. It wasn’t until the heydays of Boris Spassky in the early 1970s and Gary Kasparov in the 1990s that chess fashion became stylish again. So you see, Capablanca was way ahead of his time, both on and off the chess board.

Here is the full story.