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Emanuel Lasker Quotes

Emanuel Lasker was a German chess player, mathematician, and philosopher who was World Chess Champion for 27 years, from 1894 to 1921, the longest reign of any officially recognised World Chess Champion in history. In his prime, Lasker was one of the most dominant champions, and he is still generally regarded as one of the strongest players ever.

His contemporaries used to say that Lasker used a "psychological" approach to the game, and even that he sometimes deliberately played inferior moves to confuse opponents. Recent analysis, however, indicates that he was ahead of his time and used a more flexible approach than his contemporaries, which mystified many of them. Lasker knew contemporary analyses of openings well but disagreed with many of them. He published chess magazines and five chess books, but later players and commentators found it difficult to draw lessons from his methods.

Lasker made contributions to the development of other games. He was a first-class contract bridge player and wrote about bridge, Go, and his own invention, Lasca. His books about games presented a problem that is still considered notable in the mathematical analysis of card games. Lasker was a research mathematician who was known for his contributions to commutative algebra, which included proving the primary decomposition of the ideals of polynomial rings. His philosophical works and a drama that he co-wrote, however, received little attention. Wikipedia  

✵ 24. December 1868 – 11. January 1941
Emanuel Lasker photo
Emanuel Lasker: 8 quotes5 likes

Famous Emanuel Lasker Quotes

“When you see a good move, look for a better one”

Emanuel Lasker

“You should keep in mind no names, nor numbers, nor isolated incidents, not even results, but only methods.. The method produces numerous results; a few of these will remain in our memory, and as long as they remain few, they are useful to illustrate and to keep alive the rules which order a thousand results.”

Emanuel Lasker

Source: Lasker's Manual of Chess (1925), p. 338

“He who wants to educate himself in Chess must evade what is dead in Chess…the habit of playing with inferior opponents; the custom of avoiding difficult tasks; the weakness of uncritically taking over variations or rules discovered by others; the vanity which is self-sufficient; the incapacity for admitting mistakes; in brief, everything that leads to standstill or to anarchy.”

Emanuel Lasker

Source: Lasker's Manual of Chess (1925), p. 338

“On the chessboard, lies and hypocrisy do not survive long. The creative combination lays bare the presumption of a lie; the merciless fact, culminating in the checkmate, contradicts the hypocrite.”

Emanuel Lasker

Source: Lasker's Manual of Chess (1925), p. IX and 235 in the 1960 Dover edition; p. 183 in the 2008 edition

“Although the adage "If you find a good move, look for a better one" is often attributed to Lasker, it actually dates earlier.”

Emanuel Lasker

Others <br class="br">Source: The Chess Player&#x27;s Chronicle (January 1878), vol. 2, no. 13, page 31 https://books.google.com/books?id=xjACAAAAYAAJ&amp;pg=PA31#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false: Annotation by William Wayte (1829-1898): &quot;Still flying at high game, in accordance with the rule, &quot;When you see a good move look out for a better.&quot; &quot; <br class="br">Source: &quot;[I]t is necessary always to bear in mind these prudential rules, viz.: having a good move, to seek for a better.&quot; Dominico Ercole del Rio, &lt;i&gt;The Incomparable Game of Chess&lt;/i&gt;, trans. J.S. Bingham (London 1820), 35-36. Note Bingham incorrectly credits Ercole del Rio with work that was authored by Domenico Lorenzo Ponziani

“Put two players against each other who both have perfect technique, who both avoid weaknesses, and what is left?—a sorry caricature of chess.”

Emanuel Lasker

Others
Source: [Andrew Soltis, Soltis, Andy, The Great Chess Tournaments and Their Stories, 133, New York 1927 &bull; The End of Chess?, 1975, Chilton Book Company, 0-8019-6138-6]

“Education in Chess has to be an education in independent thinking and judgement. Chess must not be memorized, simply because it is not important enough… Memory is too valuable to be stocked with trifles.”

Emanuel Lasker

Source: Lasker's Manual of Chess (1925), p. 337

“Our efforts in chess attain only a hundredth of one percent of their rightful result…Our education, in all domains of endeavour, is frightfully wasteful of time and values.”

Emanuel Lasker

Source: Lasker's Manual of Chess (1925), p. 337

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