José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera (November 19, 1888 – March 8, 1942) was a Cuban world-class chess player in the early to mid-twentieth century. He held the title of world chess champion from 1921 to 1927.

Early years

Referred to by many chess historians as the Mozart of chess, Capablanca was a chess prodigy whose brilliance was noted at an early age.

According to Capablanca, he learned the rules of the game at the age of four by watching his father play. He said he noticed his father make an illegal move with his knight, accused him of cheating, and then demonstrated what he had done. Capablanca was taken to the Havana Chess Club when he was five, where the leading players found it impossible to beat the young boy when giving him the handicap of a queen. In 1901, just turned 13, he defeated Cuban national champion Juan Corzo by the score of 4 wins, 3 losses, and 6 draws.

World Champion

In 1920, Lasker saw that Capablanca was becoming too strong, and resigned the title to him, saying, “You have earned the title not by the formality of a challenge, but by your brilliant mastery.” Capablanca wanted to win it in a match, but Lasker insisted that he was now the challenger. They played a match in Havana in 1921, and Capablanca defeated Lasker +4 -0 =10. This feat of winning the world title without losing a game to the incumbent went unequalled for almost eight decades, until Vladimir Kramnik ‘s win over Garry Kasparov +2 -0 =13 in 2000.

The new world champion, Capablanca dominated the field at London, 1922. There was an increasing number of strong chess players and it was felt that the world champion should not be able to evade challenges to his title, as had been done in the past. At this tournament, some of the leading players of the time including Alexander Alekhine, Efim Bogoljubov, Geza Maroczy, Richard Réti, Akiba Rubinstein, Ksawery Tartakower and Milan Vidmar, met to discuss rules for the conduct of future world championships. Amongst other things, one of the conditions proposed by Capablanca was that the challenger would have to raise at least ten thousand dollars for the prize money.

In the following years, Rubinstein and Nimzowitsch challenged Capablanca but were unable to raise the stipulated funds. Alekhine ‘s subsequent challenge, in 1927, was backed by a group of Argentinian businessmen and the president of Argentina who guaranteed the funds.

Capablanca was second behind Lasker in New York 1924, and again ahead of third-placed Alekhine. He was third behind Efim Bogoljubov and Lasker in Moscow 1925. But he dominated the 6-player match tournament in New York 1927, not losing a game and 2.5 points ahead of Alekhine.

As World Champion, Capablanca also underwent major changes in his personal life. In December 1921, he married Gloria Simoni Betancourt. They had a son, José Raúl, in 1923 and a daughter, Gloria, in 1925, but the marriage ended in divorce. He also lost both parents.

Losing the title

Capablanca had overwhelming success in New York 1927, a quadruple- round robin with six of the world’s top players. He was undefeated and 2.5 points ahead of the second-placed Alekhine. Capablanca also defeated Alekhine in their first game, won the first brilliancy prize against Rudolf Spielmann and won two games against Aron Nimzowitsch.

This made him the prohibitive favorite for his match with Alekhine, who had never defeated him, later that year. However, the challenger had prepared well, and played with patience and solidity, and the marathon match proved to be Capablanca’s undoing. Capablanca lost the first game in very lacklustre fashion, then took a narrow lead by winning games 3 and 7 — attacking games more in the style of Alekhine — but then lost games 11 and 12. He tried to get Alekhine to annul the match when both players were locked in a series of draws. Alekhine refused, and eventually prevailed +6 -3 =25.

Alekhine refused to play a return match, even though doing so had been a pre-condition of the match. Despite the collapse of the financial markets in 1929, Alekhine continued to insist on the London conditions, with a $10,000 purse to be secured by the challenger. Capablanca found it difficult to satisfy this condition. Instead, Alekhine played two matches against Efim Bogoljubov, a fine player, but one who posed no great threat in a long match. (Capablanca had a 5-0 lifetime record against him). Throughout his tenure as champion, Alekhine refused to play in the same tournaments as Capablanca.

Post-championship

After Capablanca lost the title, he won a number of strong tournaments, hoping that his showing would force Alekhine to grant him a rematch, but it was not to be. In 1931 Capablanca defeated the fine Dutch player Max Euwe +2 -0 =8. Then he withdrew from serious chess, and played only less serious games at the Manhattan Chess Club and simultaneous displays. Reuben Fine recalls that in this period he could fight on almost level terms with Alekhine at blitz chess, but that Capablanca beat him “mercilessly” the few times they played.

In 1934, Capablanca resumed serious play. He had begun dating Olga Chagodayev, whom he married in 1938, and she inspired him to play again. In 1935, Alekhine, plagued by problems with alcohol, lost his title to Euwe. Capablanca had renewed hopes of regaining his title, and he won Moscow 1936, ahead of Botvinnik and Lasker. Then he tied with Botvinnik in the super-tournament of Nottingham 1936, ahead of Euwe, Lasker, Alekhine, and the leading young players Reuben Fine, Samuel Reshevsky (avenging a defeat here) and Salo Flohr.

This was Capablanca’s first game with Alekhine since their great match, and the Cuban did not miss his chance to avenge that defeat. He had the worse position, but caught Alekhine in such a deep trap, allowing him to win the exchange, that none of the other players could work out where Alekhine went wrong except Lasker, who immediately saw the mistake. Capablanca recounted this episode in Capablanca’s Legacy: Capablanca’s Last Chess Lectures, pp. 111–112, expressing his admiration for Lasker’s insight even in his sixties. But Capablanca didn’t mention that his opponent was Alekhine. Their feud was still intense, so 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 around.

In 1937, Euwe, unlike Alekhine with respect to Capablanca, fulfilled his obligation to allow Alekhine a return match. Alekhine gave up drinking, prepared well and easily regained the title. Thereafter there was little hope for Capablanca to regain his title, and Alekhine played no more world championship matches till the time of his death in 1946. The absolute control of the title by the title-holder was a major impetus for FIDE to take control of it, and try to ensure that the best challenger has a shot at the title.

Capablanca’s health took a turn for the worse. He suffered a small stroke during the AVRO tournament of 1938, and had the worst result of his career, 7th out of 8. But even at this stage of his career he was capable of producing strong results. In the 1939 Chess Olympiad in Buenos Aires, he made the best score on top board for Cuba, ahead of Alekhine and Paul Keres.

On 7 March 1942, he was happily kibitzing a skittles game at Manhattan Chess Club in New York when he collapsed from a stroke. He was taken to Mount Sinai hospital, where he died the next morning. Remarkably, the Cuban’s great rival, German-born Emanuel Lasker, had died in that very hospital only a year earlier.

His bitter rival Alekhine wrote on Capablanca’s death, “With his death, we have lost a very great chess genius whose like we shall never see again.”

Assessment

In his entire chess career, Capablanca suffered fewer than fifty losses in serious games. He was undefeated for over eight years, from February 10, 1916, when he lost from a superior position against Oscar Chajes (pronounced Ha-yes); to March 21, 1924, when he lost to Richard Reti in the New York International tournament. This was an unbeaten streak of 63 games, and included the strong London tournament of 1922, as well as the world championship match against Lasker.

In fact, only Marshall, Lasker, Alekhine and Rudolf Spielmann won two or more serious games with the mature Capablanca, but their overall lifetime scores were minus (Capablanca beat Marshall +20 -2 =28, Lasker +6 -2 = 16, Alekhine +9 -7 =33), except for Spielmann who was level (+2 -2 =8). Of top players, only Keres had a narrow plus score against him (+1 -0 =5), and that win was when Capablanca was 50.

Capablanca founded no school per se, but his style was very influential in the games of two world champions Bobby Fischer and Anatoly Karpov. Mikhail Botvinnik also wrote how much he learned from Capablanca, and pointed out that Alekhine received much schooling from him in positional play, before their fight for the world title made them bitter enemies.

Botvinnik regarded Capablanca’s book Chess Fundamentals as undoubtedly the best chess book ever written. In it, Capablanca pointed out that while the bishop was usually stronger than the knight, queen + knight was usually better than queen + bishop–the bishop merely mimicks the queen’s diagional move, while the knight can immediately reach squares the queen cannot. Botvinnik credits Capablanca as the first with this insight.

Earlier, Capablanca had received some criticism, mainly in Britain, for the allegedly conceited description of his accomplishments in his first book, My Chess Career. So Capablanca took the unprecedented step of including virtually all of his tournament and match defeats up to that time in Chess Fundamentals, together with an instructive group of his victories.

However, J. du Mont, in his foreword to Golombek’s book Capablanca’s 100 Best Games, wrote that he knew Capablanca well and could vouch that he was not conceited. Rather, critics should learn the difference between the merely gifted and the towering genius of Capablanca, and the contrast between a British tendency towards false modesty and the Latin and American tendency to say “I played this game as well as it could be played” if he honestly thought that it was correct. Du Mont also said that Capablanca was rather sensitive to criticism. And the chess historian Edward Winter documented a number of examples of self-criticism in My Chess Career.

Criticism

Most of the criticisms center upon his alleged laziness. That is, if something did not come easily to him, then it would not come at all. This trait manifested itself sometimes in deep calculation, where he occasionally relied on instinct and instead made a mistake. Also, occasionally some difficult endgame wins escaped him.

Capablanca chess

Capablanca chess. Archbishop (bishop+knight compound)
is placed between knight and bishop on the queen’s side,
chancellor (rook+knight compound) on the king’s side.

Capablanca predicted that chess would face major problems if the various top players, if they wanted to, draw every game. To prevent this from happening, Capablanca suggested a new variation on chess, called ” Capablanca chess “, to be played on a 10×8 board. His idea was that the added pieces and board size would increase the complexity of chess and allow the strongest player more opportunities to turn the game in his favor. Note that he proposed this complicated variant while he was world champion, not as sour grapes after losing his title, as some critics asserted.

Writings

• A Primer of Chess by José Raúl Capablanca (Harvest Books, November 2002, ISBN 0156028077 )
• Chess Fundamentals by José Raúl Capablanca (Originally published in 1921. Everyman Chess, October 1994, ISBN 1857440730 ) Revised and updated by Nick de Firmian in 2006, ISBN 0-8129-3681-7.
• My Chess Career by José Raúl Capablanca (Hardinge Simpole Limited, October 2003, ISBN 1843820919 )
• World’s Championship Matches, 1921 and 1927 by José Raúl Capablanca (Dover, June 1977, ISBN 0486231895 )