Hans Renette's Books On Lasker. A 'Quick' Look.

Afternoon everyone. Some good news - the Lasker project which I mentioned so long ago has finally been published. Some of my friends already have their copies, which is good to see.

I received mine in time to take volume one away on holiday with me.

What a place to sit with a beer and a wonderful book!!

Pros and cons of the books. First the annoyances.

It's two volumes - for a project of this size that is simply not enough. It should have been three volumes, released over a period of time. ( as I recall that was considered at one point ) Two huge volumes released at the same time was a mistake.

Firstly there is simply too much material for two volumes. Secondly, had it been spread over three, released over a period of time, the expense to the buyer would have been less. It would also have been possible to include in the third volume extra games which had been found - the cover is wrong in that respect anyway! - as well as an errata page to correct the errors of earlier volumes.

Also it is only available in paperback - to cut costs, as the books are expensive and very large. Studying games with a board, you have to put a weight onto the pages to hold them flat. My first volume now looks like this.

The proof reading is - let's be blunt here - dreadful, and also clearly not done by someone who knows anything about the subject matter. How can games be given with the wrong result, names which crop up a number of times be given differently on different pages, clear typos go uncorrected, etc. It's just poor. End of.

The indexing is not as extensive as in many books by the same publishers, and often pictures are given with no primary source - my regular readers will know how much that irritates me!

Enough already!

The pros.

Hans' work is utterly magnificent. Beyond what I had expected when I first became aware of the project. All events - whether  tournaments, matches or exhibitions etc. are researched - details, backgrounds  and commentaries given along with the numbers, and fitted into Lasker's biography and chess career.

Lots of pictures - as he says The Cleveland Library special collections have been trawled, for example. I love my old pictures and was honoured to be able to contribute one or two here and there, along with some other material from my library.

There is a mass of game notes. Hans uses only contemporary commentaries for the games. ( I'll be back!!) from an incredible number of sources, including having researched Lasker's numerous newspaper columns ( a huge undertaking in itself) For example the New York 1924 tournament has game notes from a number of sources, including transcribing Alekhine's huge volume of notes from the Tournament Book.

( To interject, in what I do, translating notes and putting them into games is the most time consuming thing I do. It's hard work. These books have over 1800 games. Go figure!)

Let's do my stuff. 

So, New York 1924. Lasker had a famous/infamous loos to Capablanca. There was a highly unpleasant dispute over a clock running incorrectly. It's all quite well documented now. For example it is covered in Winter's chess notes. https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/laskerrevelations.html   

Renette notes the incident in the book. I won't comment on the whole affair here, but I will point out an anomaly. Two sources say that Lasker got into time trouble. The tournament director, Norbert Lederer says that he didn't, but Capablanca did. Edward Lasker says that both players got into time trouble ( I would trust his account most) Edward Lasker also notes that Lasker - an extremely rare case for him - totally lost his composure. Certainly the whole incident disturbed Alekhine, as he notes in the tournament book, whilst not giving the details.

Renette gives no less than three(!) sets of notes to the game! By Alekhine, Grunfeld and Lasker himself. So, the game with Lasker's notes, which do not mention the clock incident.

As said, Renette gives only contemporary notes to the games - the bibliography is mind blowing. I love contemporary notes - they are right in the time - but as I have often said, don't trust them! They were often thrown together quickly and with little effort. Here is an example which I have used before. One of Lasker's earliest tournament games was against a fascinating chess figure in his own right, Rudolf Loman.

Lasker in 'coffee house' mode.

Renette gives Hoffer's notes, which are up to his usual - not very high - standard. Have fun finding what Hoffer - and the players, to be fair, missed.

As I have said before there can be very few people who have spent as much time looking at Lasker's games as I have. Despite that there is a huge amount in the books which is totally new to me. One which caught my eye was this page - reproduced with the consent of the author.

As he says for many years no games from this match were known, but now we have one! The game with my own notes. I put them together over a beer  or two sitting in a forest, and then later quickly engine checked, so feel free to correct them!

In the couple of pages after that one the name of Lasker's great friend Hermann Keidanski

comes up. There are many games involving the two - including being on the same consultation team - to be found and the Forster et al trilogy has some details on their relationship. 

So, to finish, a game which I have known for nearly 50 years. Thanks to Renette I now know a few details. On his return from the Steinitz match Lasker gave - a rarity for him - a simultaneous blindfold exhibition, in Berlin. It was in aid of his cousin's charity 'the children's soup kitchen' which must have resonated with him. The opposition was very strong, and he scored two wins and two draws.

Here is the original source material. Deutsches Wochenschach. 1893. Pages 263-264. Renette has translated and  transcribed the notes and included them in the game score in the book..

I will give the bare game score so that you can try to do the work yourself, and so appreciate what is involved in doing so over 1500 times!!

That's it for now - no doubt I will be back with more. Anyone asking 'should I buy the books' wins the dumb question of the month award.

To finish, a nice picture which I have used before to show how much better at this stuff Renette is than me. I speculated on the date, but he has a much better version, and dates it as February 1935. Lasker and his wife. ( he doe's not name the figure right of picture, who is Valarian Eremeev, so perhaps I get a draw on that one!!)