Customer Reviews (1)

Synopsis
The St. Petersburg Grand International Masters' Tournament of 1914 was undoubtedly the most important tournament since the first San Sebastian Tournament, when Capablanca won his spurs, or, as some will have it, since the St. Petersburg Quadrangular Tournament of 1895.

It would be noteworthy even if for no other reason than that the World's Champion, Dr. Emanuel Lasker, took part - the first occasion since the last International Tournament in St. Petersburg in 1909. On that occasion, however he tied for the first place with Akuba K. Rubinstein instead of winning outright, as on this occasion and in 1895.


It is a remarkable circumstance that this time Rubinstein did not even attain so high as fifth place, which would have enabled him to play in the second section for the allocation of the prizes, the more extraordinary in view of his almost unbroken success of late years. The St. Petersburg Chess Society was responsible for the initiation, organization, and conduct of the Tournament, the Tsar himself subscribing 1,000 roubles towards the prize fund.
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Book Description

Customer Reviews (8)

Great Starter Book
The author of this book, Emmanuel Lasker is one of the immortal figures of chess and held the World Championship in the early 20th century for 27 years.This is a great little chess primer for the beginning student of chess.Learn and enjoy!

A Classic of Chess Literature Still very Useful for Novices

In this book Lasker offers the novice many valuable hints which will improve his game rapidly. The book deals with each part of the game with the aid of general principles.

If you are an experienced or already an strong player you won't benefit from this book. Chances are that you will find the book too basic or obvious, but if you are a newcomer to the world of chess you have something to win from reading and studying this book.

The book is wrote in an clear and conversational way, such as the one of a lecturer. Any novice will find expositions of the basic problems common to every game of chess.

Old age, old ideas
Dr. Lasker was a great world champion in his time, but that doesn't say that he was a good teacher as well (Dr. Tarrash on the other hand, wasn't a world champion, but he was a great tutor). Lasker's "Common sense in Chess" suffers from a serious weaknesses. The first one is Lasker's type of player. He was a "practical" player more than a theory creator. That helped him, I guess, to keep the title for more than 20 years, but didn't help him to explain in this book the thoughts behind the ideas, to show us how to observe complicated positions, and to understand the game better, like Tarrash did. Second weakness of the book is its age: It was written in 1895. Being an old book doesn't mean that it must be a bad one, but in this case it does. Short time after the book was released, theory revolution started by the "hyper modern" masters - Nimzovich, Reti, Alekhine, Breyer etc. Reti, in his classic "Modern ideas in Chess", demonstrates very well how the old Steinitz school masters, including Lasker, failed to understand the new ideas of the young masters. This revolution, that is represented well by Nimzovich and Reti, and is agreed to be the basic foundation of the modern Chess, is not in this book. So besides a limited historical value, this book had lost its importance years ago, unlike "My system", for example.

You said Common Sense?
This was a disappointing buy to me. Common sense is a large topic and this book didn't give me what I was expecting from it.
The matters are treated in a too slim way, and games analysis are from openings we usually do not see any more. A large subject but a small treatment. But maybe I just didn't understand it?

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this is a good book to start with after u get familiar with the
basic rules of chess like how to move pieces castle and all that stuff. this is like a primer for beginners
if u have played well over some 100 games to 200 games u may need it no promise there but if u have played well over 500 games think twice or thrice because it is quite basic well can handle the rest ... Read more