World Chess Championship 1910 (Lasker–Schlechter)

Emanuel Lasker faced Carl Schlechter in the 1910 World Chess Championship. It was played from January 7 to February 10, 1910 in Vienna and Berlin. The match was tied and Lasker retained his title.

The winner would be the player with the best score after 10 games. The match was drawn, so Lasker retained the world title.

The match is generally regarded as a World Championship match, but some sources have doubted this in view of its strange outcome. R.J. Buckley reported in the American Chess Bulletin that the ten-game match was not for the World Championship, and that its result suggested that "a contest on different terms, a match for the World Championship" should be played. But at the foot of this article the editor added that Lasker had told him, "Yes, I placed the title at stake". In the Encyclopaedia of Chess, Anne Sunnucks describes the match as "a so-called championship match".

On the other hand, in its book Le guide des échecs the chess author Nicolas Giffard does not express the slightest doubt that this was a chess championship, but points out that in case Schlechter won, he would still need to win a revenge match before being called the World Champion.

Lasker drew the match by winning the final game. It may be that Schlechter needed to win by a two-point margin in order to win the title, and so had no choice but to play for a win in the final game, in which he missed first a win, then a clear draw, before losing the game.

Historians are divided over whether the two-point margin was required. Israel Horowitz, Nicolas Giffard and Fred Wilson all write that a two-point margin was required. The chess researcher Graeme Cree writes,

There are still some who doubt whether this two-point clause existed, and as far as I know, positive proof does not exist. But the evidence of Schlechter's play in that final game, plus the difficulty of imagining a cagey bird like Lasker risking his title in such a short match without some extra protection seems pretty telling. Not to mention the fact that negotiations for a Lasker–Capablanca match broke down the very next year over that very same 2-point tie clause.

Lasker himself wrote two days before the tenth game, "The match with Schlechter is nearing its end and it appears probable that for the first time in my life I shall be the loser. If that should happen a good man will have won the World Championship", which could imply that it really was a world title match and that there was no secret "two-game lead" clause.

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Wikipedia