( on ANGEL - FIRE. )
|
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A picture of Frank J. Marshall.
(Click here to view- or buy - pictures, or other Marshall stuff on e-bay.)
Click HERE
to go to the USCF page that
covers great U.S. Chess players.
(Marshall was
one of our greatest players - for the first 100 years of U.S. chess, anyway.)
Click HERE to go to the Wikipedia Page for Frank J. Marshall.
Marshall vindicated? A nice article by Robert Byrne.
Click HERE to go to the
(on-line)
FRANK J. MARSHALL Electronic
Archive and Museum.
This is - and surely will be - the definitive site for this player!!!
*******
Click HERE
(was here)
to go to Steve Etzel's website
on Cambridge Springs, 1904.
(Steve's OLD website was:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/oldstuff/cs1904.htm, but do not
use that, as it is out of date.)
Click HERE for an interesting profile. (It also has a list of games that you can replay!)
Just about every player has heard about this player ... but how much do you know about him really?
I am NOT going to suggest Marshall was one of the greatest who ever lived. He is NOT even the greatest American chess player who ever lived. But I have been asked - by literally dozens of players - to write an article and do a web page on this player ... so here it is.
What are Marshall's ... "TEN BEST Games?" This is hard to say. Were he alive, he might pick an entirely different list than I would today. But I will give it a shot. (JFG&G) Using one book! (Many of these games are now annotated, see the list below.)
Frank
J. Marshall - Dr. Emanuel Lasker; Paris, 1900. > Their very
first meeting.
(When I ask "Marshall fans," or other chess historians to put
together a list of the best
games that this American original played, this one always pops
up.) (Done.)
F.J.
Marshall - Harry N. Pillsbury; Vienna, 1903. > Marshall's best game
vs. Pillsbury.
(At least according to Marshall! See "My Fifty Years
of Chess.") (Done.)
F.J.
Marshall - M. Tchigorin; Vienna, 1903. > Marco says this is one of
Frank's best.
(This game seems to be somewhat overlooked, I find it in very few sources or
lists.)
(Done.)
F.J.
Marshall - J. Mieses; Cambridge Springs, 1904. > He wins an ending
just like Capa!
Of course this was Marshall's greatest triumph ... in an incredibly strong
tournament.
( +
11, = 4, - 0!! And possibly the strongest tournament ever held on
U.S. soil. ) (Done.)
D.
Janowski - F.J. Marshall; Match Game, 1905. > The best game of the
whole match.
(I think I read that historian Edward Winter said this was a great
game.)
F.J.
Marshall - M. Tchigorin; Ostende, 1905. > Real "4th of
July" fireworks in this game!
(I have consulted several sources as concerns this game. Marshall did not do
well in this
particular tournament, finishing out of the prize money. {Geza
Maroczy won, 1.5 points
ahead of Tarrasch and Janowsky.}
His game against Burn won the Second Brilliancy
Prize, I have no idea who won first BP. But this game is easily one of
the most brilliant
of the tournament, several historians have told me it must be in the
'Top Five' of all the
games that Marshall ever won! Soltis ranks it {#63}
in the 'Top 100'
of the 20th Century!!)
{A GM wrote to me just before Christmas of 2003. He said this was
easily one of Frank
J. Marshall's very best games ... and I should seriously consider
annotating it for my
web page. Now I have!! See the games list
... just below.} (Done.)
F.J.
Marshall - K. Schlechter; Barmen, 1905. > A surprise
resignation from a great player.
A very energetic and spritely game against a man who once played a (short)
match with
Dr. Emanuel Lasker for the World's Championship.
R.
Swidersky - F.J. Marshall; Ostende, 1906. > A fantastic BRILLIANCY
PRIZE Game.
Many people have told me that this is definitely one of Marshall's
best.
F.J.
Marshall - R. Spielmann; Nuremburg, 1906. > Sacrifices ...
against the author of a very
famous book on sacrifices!! Marshall only had like 9 wins, 7 draws, no
losses. (Clear 1st.)
F.J.
Marshall - H. Wolf; Nuremburg; 1906. > Many say this is his MOST
brilliant game!!!
(Several chess historians pick this as one of Marshall's finest
games!)
************************************************************************************
---> I tried to pick games that were picked by Marshall himself in his book, "My Fifty Years of Chess." I also tried to confine myself to a ten-year or so span ... during which Marshall won several very strong international tournaments. Naturally you are NOT bound to accept my list!
... If you really have a major problem with my list, please make your own!!!
********
This is not all of Marshall's best wins, not by a long shot. There is a nice win over Tarrasch I remember, (St. Petersburg, 1914?); a very nice victory over Capablanca from their match; there was a game he played where he was lost but basically 'swindled' his way to victory ... but in an extremely brilliant manner; a win over Alekhine someone showed me when I was just a teenager; and a few others. Now that you can buy the Hardinge-Simpole re-print, I advise all Marshall fans to get this book. (AND ... The book by Soltis as well. He analyzes many games that are not in Marshall's book. Any REAL Marshall fan needs both books, in my opinion.)
I now have several books on Marshall. (A copy of Marshall's own book, the Soltis book, and one or two others.) But by far the most informative and well-documented book is the volume, "YOUNG MARSHALL," by John S. Hilbert. (Copyright © 2002. ISBN: # 80-7189-438-9.) This book appears to be the result of years of meticulous research and contains almost no factual errors about his life.
These
are not the only sources of Marshall information I have. I also have books on
many of the tournaments that Marshall himself played in. This includes many
(copies and re-prints) of old magazines like: "The American Chess
Bulletin," "The Lasker Magazine," etc.
---> I also have one of the largest personal (chess) libraries in
the south. (USA)
At one time - before Soltis came out with his book - several parties knew I was interested in Marshall ... and had even fooled around with the idea of doing a chess book on Marshall. Over the years I accumulated much knowledge about this player from various sources:
There used to be a player in New York who claimed he knew Marshall and that Marshall and his Father were good childhood friends. I also used to travel to New York a lot. I have (also) been to the Marshall Chess Club more times than I can count. (When I was younger, I used to spend summers and holidays with my Grand-mother in New York City.)
I went to the Cleveland Public Library a number of times to do research. (I used to have a job for a computer firm and I traveled almost constantly.) Marshall was one of my favorite subjects, I used to have dozens of notebooks of information I had collected on this great American Chess-player.
I have been to Montreal about 8 times. Every time I went there, I tried to do as much research on Marshall as possible. (Marshall lived there for over 10 years.)
I was contemplating - a number of years ago - writing a book on Marshall. During this period I was receiving a number of copies of old newspaper and magazine articles. (From editors and chess friends.) Many people do not know that several newspapers published a string of articles about Marshall and his family after his monumental win in Cambridge Springs, 1904. These were published all over the country, but the main sources were found in Philadelphia and New York City. (And in several private collections.)
During the 1980's I went to several "World Open's" in Philadelphia. At one of these tournaments, I met a gentleman who claimed to be the Great (or Great-great) Grand-Son of the original proprietor of the "Hope Coffee House" (and Chess Club) in Montreal, Canada. (This was the FIRST chess club that Frank Marshall ever attended.) I became good friends with this gentleman - after initially calling him a liar - and we even corresponded for a number of years. (Although I now have lost touch with him.) Virtually EVERYTHING this gentleman told me, I was later to verify through a host of independent sources!!
One of the real questions I have always had is that Marshall's own accounts of his life do not always seem to go together, or seem to possibly contradict each other. By some accounts, Marshall learned the game anywhere from the age of six, to the age of 12! Which one is correct? There seems to be (now) a mountain of evidence that Marshall himself cannot be trusted when it comes to the facts of his life. Either he had a bad memory, (perhaps from years of alcohol abuse); or he intentionally 'gilded the lily.' "As the reader will learn, Marshall's own memory of his earliest days was - to say the least - {highly} suspect." - John S. Hilbert. (page ii {introduction} of his book)
In fact, someone recently sent me a photo-copy of an old New York magazine, where Marshall had an interview published ... probably just a few short years before he died.
Several of Marshall's own statements turn out to be completely false.
For example:
<<
I won the Championship of the Montreal Chess Club when I was just 15.
Mine was the first name inscribed on the
"Workman Trophy." >> (COMPLETELY FALSE!! Hilbert documents that he did NOT
win the first Championship of the Montreal Chess Club. Hilbert states that
one 'J.B. Cooke' was the first winner. And thanks to some dedicated
fans, a 'blow-up' of a picture of this trophy clearly shows that the 1st
name was NOT Marshall's!)
(Perhaps Marshall was
confusing this with a very large handicap tournament ... which he did win at about this time?
Did time
cause him to forget? Maybe a bad memory in old age?)
In answering the question of whether or not he was a good student, he (Marshall) responds: << I was a very good student, I graduated from my High School class ... with honors. >> (Once again, this seems to be completely false. A chess friend who lives in Montreal searched their archives. They used to print the name of the graduating class in the newspapers - no trace of Marshall's name can be found. And BOTH Hilbert and Soltis note what a poor speller Marshall was. It seems highly likely that Marshall NEVER graduated from High School at all!)
I am trying to research this VERY carefully. When I get done, this will be a brief ... - BUT FACTUAL - {above all else} account of Marshall's life. Any part or disputed item will be simply skipped!!
FRANK JAMES MARSHALL
(born Aug-10-1877, died Nov-09-1944) / United States of America.
Frank James Marshall, born in New York City on August 10, 1877, was United States champion from 1909-1936 and a respected international competitor for the first quarter of the 20th century.
He began international play by winning the Minor tournament at London 1899. In his major tournament debut at Paris 1900, Marshall finished =3rd with Geza Maroczy, defeating World Champion Emanuel Lasker in their individual game.
Known for an aggressive style and an ability to get out of trouble that earned him the nickname "The Great Swindler", Marshall recorded both high finishes and disappointing results in elite tournaments.
Marshall won the US Championship by defeating Jackson Whipps Showalter in a 1909 match (+7 -2 =3). He defended the title once, against Edward Lasker in 1923 (+5 -4 =9), finally relinquishing it voluntarily in 1936 to allow the championship to be decided by tournament play.
Many different opening systems were created {primarily}
by Frank J. Marshall; most notably Ruy Lopez, Marshall Gambit (C89). Though his original use of it in Capablanca vs Marshall, 1918;
[replay]
resulted in a loss, the gambit is still studied today and played occasionally at the highest levels.
Here is one of the most famous Marshall games of all time ... played against
another American.
GM
Frank J. Marshall - GM Harry N. Pillsbury; Cambridge
Springs, 1904. Check it
out!!!
This one victory ... coming as it did early in the tournament,
in Round Two ... was a giant step for
young Marshall, who was on his way to one of the greatest chess
tournament victories if all time!!!
The famous game, Lewitsky
- Marshall; which features a most unbelievable move!!
This is easily one of THE MOST AMAZING MOVES
ever made!
The very famous game: Frank
J. Marshall - Amos Burn; Ostende,
1907.
This is one of Marshall's best and most brilliant games. It is a
really vicious attack.
It is also the game where poor Burn ... an inveterate
pipe-smoker ... is mated
before he gets his pipe properly lit!! A truly fantastic game
of chess!!!
The famous game: J.R.
Capablanca - Frank J. Marshall; New
York, 1918.
While Marshall loses this game, it is still a game of
tremendous historical importance.
(The first use of Marshall's then new gambit. It is also
considered by MANY to be one
of the very best games of the whole of the 20th
Century!!!)
It's here: The game A. Nimzovich -
F.J. Marshall;
Bad Kissingen, 1928.
One of Marshall's BEST GAMES!!!!! It also won FIRST
BRILLIANCY PRIZE at this
extremely strong tournament. (Bogo won, despite losing to Capa. ALL
the players of
this event are true legends of chess.)
It is
here!!! Marshall's brilliantly
played, long and difficult game
vs. D. Janowski
from Cambridge Springs, 1904. Marshall said
he was very proud of this 'grueling'
victory which practically guaranteed him clear first place in the
tournament.
(Game first posted - in completed version - on October 31st,
2003.)
It
is here!! This could be the most brilliant game of the whole of
Marshall's long and very
storied career. (A former U.S. Champion once told
me this was his favorite Marshall game!)
And now I have been blessed to
receive new information about this game.
This makes this game, "Marshall
vs. Tchigorin; Ostende, 1905" ... A MUST SEE!!
(Posted here: April 15th, 2004.)
It's
here!! This is a game that gets mentioned
by nearly everybody who is asked to put together
a list of the greatest
games that Marshall ever played. It is also NOT a
well-known story that
Marshall almost ran away with this tournament in the
early going ... he started an amazing
(undefeated) 6-1 after seven games
played. (But he faded a little at the end.) None-the-less,
this is one of
the more interesting games Marshall ever played. I have also worked for
YEARS
on this game. It is definitely a fascinating game, so check it
out!
"F.J.
Marshall vs. Emanuel Lasker; / ICT / Paris, FRA / (Rd. # 6) / May 28th,
1900."
It is here!!! Marshall had a pretty good record against H.N.
Pillsbury. They played a grand total
of like eleven serious, tournament
games against each other. (I believe that both players had five wins ...
and
just one draw between them.) Here is the game that Marshall himself was the
best of the whole
series, (at least from his perspective). It
is finally here! Check
it out!
"F.J.
Marshall - H.N. Pillsbury; King's Gambit Theme Tournament / Vienna, 1903."
(Posted here, May 10th,
2004.)
A Great Game!! This is the
contest, F.
Marshall - J. Mieses, Cambridge Springs, 1904.
(A game that was played in excellent style by
Marshall, it features several unexpected turns.)
I first annotated this game sometime in the 1980's, but I have long
since lost track of those files.
I {roughly} re-annotated this game last year, (in 2003); and after many
passes - trying to refine it, -
I passed it along to a friend. (He was kind
enough to format this game and place it on his web
site.)
This game represents many months of work ... Steve and I have fussed over
this game for
probably close to six months now. Enjoy
... and pass along my thanks to Steve
Etzel.
(Steve is {also}
responsible for catching many errors in this game - additionally,
he
greatly helped me to clarify the language of my notes to this
fantastic struggle.)
[ REPLAY
] (The
link to this game was posted here on: Saturday; October 09th, 2004.)
Reserved. (For the game of Marshall's ... from his MATCH with Janowski.)
A NEW GAME!!! (Coming soon.) Marshall defeats one of
the world's best players, and resignation comes well
before move twenty-five. Incredible!! How did Marshall do
it? (This will be Marshall -
Schlechter, when it is finished.)
This
is not all that great a game
... but it is one I annotated. It is Marshall's last-round
victory.
Of course I am talking about: A.W. Fox - Frank J.
Marshall; Cambridge Springs; 1904. (R15)
Check it out!! {This
is the last round of this tournament ... so it is of some historical
significance.}
This
is the contest: Emanuel Lasker -
F.J. Marshall; Cambridge Springs,
1904. (Posted: May 21st,
2005.)
Coming as it did - relatively early in the tournament - neither player could
have realized the true historical
significance, especially seeing as Marshall went on to win this event
without the loss of a single game.
Here ... he "throws down" with the man who sits on the throne, and
does not come off too badly. It is a
truly monumental struggle, that took many years of analysis to do correctly.
(I found some old notes of
mine, apparently I did a whole bunch of work ... and saved it to floppy
disks ... in 1998.) When I first
{RE-started} on this again a few years ago, I
thought this was going to be a relatively simple project.
I thought I could knock out the analysis in a week or two, and the web page
would only take one or two
days to complete. The harsh reality is that the game took close to two years
of work ... and the web page
also took a very long time. (I had several detours
along the way.) Check it out!!
And enjoy!
While
not one of his best games, it is a justly famous game. It is also one of his
more important ones, at
least from a historical perspective. Of course, I am talking about: Marshall
- Tchigorin; from their first
round encounter at Cambridge Springs, 1904. Care to see what I
am talking about? Then - take
a look!
(Added here: September 28th,
2005.)
Continuing
with the examination of all of this great player's games from the CS 1904
event.
Here
is the game John F. Barry - Frank J. Marshall;
Cambridge Springs, (USA) 1904. Have
a look!
As
part of my effort to annotate all the games (from CS1904), here
is Marshall's sixth round win over his
countryman, Thomas F. Lawrence. Its an interesting game, and the
opening is one that I do not believe
that I have ever covered before. Many interesting tactics, Marshall defends
superbly. Please take a look.
Next?
I really did not know (or care) until about five years ago ... when I really began building up my websites. After I had begun this process, I became intensely interested in chess history - and what each player's proper place in that history should be.
I had always thought that Marshall was a relatively weak player, incapable of holding his own with the world's very best players. I based my judgment on true facts - Marshall was blown out of his matches with Lasker and Capablanca ... but these were statistically isolated events. (And these two players were also two of the greatest geniuses to ever play the game - Marshall had the bad fortune of playing each man when both were very close to the height of their powers.)
So I began writing players, buying books and reading. I wanted to correctly ascertain just what Marshall's true strength was. Three of the most reliable chess historians make basically the same comment, to whit: "Marshall was one of the world's best players (Top 10) for close to (or over) 20 years." Hmmmm. That statement ... in and of itself ... is something of an eye-opener. (See the book: "The Oxford Companion To Chess," by D. Hooper and K. Whyld.) And what about a chess statistician, (Mr. Jeff Sonas); whose body of work virtually speaks for itself?
According
to one of the world's greatest experts on chess ratings since ARPAD ELO
... ...
...
Sonas says Marshall makes his first appearance at age 23 at # 18 in the world.
(Strangely, he makes his exit from Sonas's lists in 1935 at the EXACT SAME
POSITION!!!) Not only this, but there is a stretch of nearly FIFTEEN YEARS ...
(1913 to 1927) ... where Marshall spends the large majority of that period in
the WORLD's TOP FIVE ... and for the period 1904 to his retirement
in 1936 ... NEVER dropped out the world's Top 20!!!!! And his career in chess,
which stretched from the time of Steinitz to almost the time of Botvinnik, was
spent mostly in the World's 10-15 best players. Things are starting to come into
focus now.
According to Sonas, his peak rating was 2706 at the end of 1917, making him # 4 in the world!! Not too bad ... any way you slice it. And since most serious mathematicians agree that there has been a SERIOUS rating inflation over the last 30-40 years ... (some say 5 or even 10 points a year); ... this would mean that today Marshall's best rating would have placed him {easily} in the 2750+ rating area. VERY respectable company ... to say the least! In fact I used a modified formula, which is nearly identical to the one used today. I assigned ratings to the players in the Nuremburg tournament consistent with a mid-2002 FIDE rating list. Then I went back and re-rated his performance in that tournament. His PR (PR = a performance rating); was OVER 2860!! This puts him in the same neighborhood as Kasparov and some of his best tournaments!!! And his lifetime score against some very great players - Tchigorin, for example - was nearly equal. If Sonas's, Gaige's and Clarke's calculations are correct, Marshall was probably close to or in the World's "TOP TEN" ... for close to 30 years!!! And while he was probably never the equal of Capa or Lasker, his score in Cambridge Springs, 1904 ... has NO MODERN PARALLEL!!!
Sonas
says Marshall's
FIVE-YEAR PEAK
was 2685,
... ... ...
and is # 53
over-all.
(That is he is the fifty-third greatest player who ever lived, at least according to Sonas.)
***
On page # 193 of Professor Arpad Elo's book, ("The Rating(s) of Chess-Players, Past and Present;" © 1978 ISBN: # 0-7134-1860-5); says that Marshall's FIVE-YEAR PEAK was 2570. Since most mathematicians agree that since 1970 there has been approximately 150 points of rating inflation, Elo's rating -adjusted for inflation - would be 2720. And according to the chart found in ELO's book, (Beginning on page # 88 it charts the ratings of 36 of the greatest Masters who ever lived.); there are not more 15-20 players ahead of Marshall. (Infer what you will.)
He could only play swindles. Marshall WAS famous for his swindles ... and he practically invented them. But you don't stay in the World's "Top 10" players ... for close to (or over) 20 years on swindles alone. QED.
He had a very small and narrow opening repertoire. This is just plain silly. And I am not even sure when this one got started. I read it in a re-printed article that came from a piece done in a U.S. chess magazine by one of the strongest American players ever. If you examine any database of his games, you see such a wide variety of different and very complex lines ... it seems almost incredulous that anyone would ever make such a truly ludicrous and blatantly false statement. - - - - - It does NOT stand up to the facts. PERIOD!
He
was a POOR MATCH PLAYER. This one was
repeated so often and so many times, many authors have taken it as an absolute fact. Even
normally reliable chess historians like E. Winter and N. Divinsky have repeated this
garbage. (Soltis repeats this tripe as well.) (May - 2004: As Mr. E. Winter, himself, recently pointed out
to me that Marshall sort of embraced this idea as well. But to me he sounds like a
mentally beaten player looking for an excuse for a bad result. The fact that Lasker
and Capablanca were just better than him never occurred to him, or at least I have
never seen anything in print where you see Marshall admitting the plain and
simple truth.)
Marshall was thrashed by Tarrasch in 1905. But Frank had been ill, and
this was also the same year he lost his Father ... although Marshall NEVER made
excuses!! He also lost to Lasker in 1907 and Capablanca in 1909. And although the scores
in the match are not justified (completely) by their respective ratings, the simple
truth was that Capa and Lasker were MUCH better than Marshall ever was, PERIOD!
And I am quite sure that Marshall expected to win his match against Capa easily.
(This particular fact is not in dispute. By the time Marshall
realized what a really strong player Capa was, the best he could do was make a stand and try
to draw as many games as possible ... before ultimately losing. And he did this
fairly well.)
Where did this myth come from?
I think it came from the monster of
expectations. After his ENORMOUS triumph (CS 1904), everyone - (I think) Marshall
included - expected the same kind of performance from him - all the time. After
he was trounced by Capa, people went looking for excuses for why he lost ... and
eventually they either found them ... or simply made them up!! Shortly after the loss to
Capa, Hermann Helms wrote in "The American Chess Bulletin," that Marshall
lacked the proper temperament and psychology for match play. And people swallowed this trash;
hook, line & sinker.
Korchnoi once said there is no such thing as a
bad match player - just
good players, better players ... and bad ones. And the numbers tend to back him up.
At one time, it was thought that the fact that Tal had lost so much to Korchnoi was
a simple fluke. We now know it was simply because Korchnoi was a great player, (Keene
and Divinsky - {In their book, "Warriors of The Mind."};
rank Korchnoi as one of the TEN GREATEST of all time!); - and
because his style was one of the most difficult for Tal to meet. (See
Elo's book, section 5.6, pages # 92 - 94.)
My numbers indicate Marshall played dozens of FUN matches ... at all
kinds of VERY ridiculous odds. And he won the overwhelming majority of these!! He
also played somewhere between 25 to 35 SERIOUS matches ....
and he won most of these as well. THE NUMBERS DO NOT LIE!!! Marshall was a very good match player.
Just a few of his match wins are: # 1.)
David Janowski very near the height of his powers; # 2.) Richard Teichmann; very near
his rating peak; # 3.) He virtually
crushed the near legendary Jackson Whipps Showalter ... just a few short years after
Showalter "covered himself in glory" by coming in fifth at Cambridge Springs,
1904; # 4.) He also
only lost by the narrowest of margins to some players who were considered
to be legitimate World Championship contenders - like his loss to A. Rubinstein ... BY
ONE POINT! ... on the other fellows' home ground. (Rubinstein ... at age 26 ... was
rated nearly 2650, and was probably the third highest active player in the world.)
So the next time someone repeats the <supposed> "fact"
that Marshall was a bad match player, simply smile, nod your head ... and treat them the way
you would a senile pet that can no longer control its functions properly. The
simple mathematical truth is that the opponents Marshall lost to were vastly superior to
him in rating. (When Marshall lost to Tarrasch, Tarrasch's rating was nearly 225
points higher than Marshall's was anyway. In 1907, Marshall is only about 2550,
while Lasker is very close to 2800. The same goes for Capa ... who also was one of
the best
players who ever lived ... and STATISTICALLY maybe one of the MOST
difficult to defeat in the history of chess!! ---> Capa lost the smallest
overall percentage of games of any master who ever lived. Marshall was also too
INCONSISTENT to be a really great match player. Look at the cross-tables of the
tournaments that he played in. Good results are interspersed with some fairly bad or
mediocre ones.)
(Players - like Tigran Petrosian - who were very consistent, and
thus ... VERY GOOD MATCH Players ...
also were NOT
great tournament players. Petrosian's six-year reign as World Champion has few
...
- if any! - outstanding tournament
wins.)
The simple truth ... is that
Marshall suffered from bad luck as much as anything else. The odds of a player having
his best tournament result ever, and then losing so badly in three matches within only
five years ...
is about ONE in FIFTY MILLION!!!!!!!!
Please ... do the math, guys. Just do the math.
February, 2005: I have begun some homework into "Marshall vs. Em. Lasker." How many times did they play? What were the results? (I have built a database, and I am going over the games.) Eventually ... I hoped to have a detailed breakdown and analysis of Marshall's encounters with the great Em. Lasker.
March, 2005: According to the interesting book, "Life Maps," (of The Great Chess Masters, 1994); by Nathan Divinsky, Lasker played Marshall - not counting exhibitions - 25 games. I now have all of these games in a unique database, and most of these have been carefully checked and scrutinized against a variety of different sources. (Most importantly, at least in my opinion, is Ken Whyld's book of Lasker's collected games.)
April, 2005: I have done quite a bit of checking. These two played like 25 times. (+ 2, = 11, -12) Apparently, Marshall defeated Lasker only twice. And as one of these (1940) was a short (exhibition?) match, only one game, Paris, 1900; can be considered a solid win for Marshall. According to this new (revised?) list, Lasker is in the "Top Five" of all time, while Marshall is # 29. I am not really sure what this means, aside from the real obvious stuff. ( # 1.) Lasker was just better than Marshall; and # 2.) Marshall sometimes played against Lasker as if he were hypnotized. ) Marshall had good averages & lifetime scores against some players - but not Emanuel Lasker.
Click here to go to a GOOGLE page ... with THOUSANDS of Marshall links!!
Click HERE to see an interesting article on Marshall.
This page was last updated on 04/02/14 .
***
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***
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***
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