[6] He trained with and played against the strong master Gersz Salwe in Łódź and in 1903, after finishing fifth in a tournament in Kyiv, Rubinstein decided to abandon his rabbinical studies and devote himself entirely to chess.

Wilhelm Steinitz, the first universally recognized world champion, died in 1900 after having been largely retired from chess for several years, Russian master Mikhail Chigorin was nearing the end of his life, while American master Frank Marshall lived on the other side of the Atlantic, far from the center of chess activity in Europe.

In the pre-FIDE era, the reigning world champion handpicked his challenger, and Emanuel Lasker demanded a high sum of money that Rubinstein could not produce.

During World War I, he was confined to Poland, although he played in a few organized chess events there and traveled to Berlin in early 1918 for a tournament.

Rubinstein came in fourth place in the London 1922 tournament, after which the new world champion Jose Raul Capablanca offered to play him in a match if he could raise the money, which once again he was unable to do.

At Hastings 1922, he came in second place, followed by a fifth-place finish at Teplitz-Schönau late in the year, and then won in Vienna brilliantly.

Rubinstein closed out 1922 with another appearance at Hastings, which he won, but his tournament record during 1923 was disappointing as he came in just twelfth place at Carlsbad and tenth at Maehrisch-Ostrau.

He attempted to participate in the New York tournament that spring but was excluded from the event due to a limited number of available slots, all of which were filled.

He embarked on an exhibition tour of the United States in early 1928; although a match with reigning US chess champion Frank Marshall was proposed along with an international tournament, it never materialized.

After 1932 he withdrew from tournament play as his noted anthropophobia showed traces of schizophrenia during a mental health breakdown.

[13] In one period, after making a chess move he would go and hide in the corner of the tournament hall while awaiting his opponent's reply.

"[16] Rubinstein was also a well-known coffee drinker, and was known to consume the hot beverage in large quantities before important matches.

Unlike many other top grandmasters, he left no literary legacy, which has been attributed to his mental health problems.

Rubinstein is a tragic, mentally ill character in the novel The Lüneburg Variation about chess masters, obsession and revenge, by Italian writer Paolo Maurensig.

However, while in the mental clinic Rubinstein was visited by Alberic O'Kelly on a number of occasions and he provided the latter with some chess guidance.

The Rubinstein Memorial tournament in his honour has been held annually since 1963 in Polanica Zdrój, with a glittering list of top-flight winners.

He reportedly still followed chess in his final years; his sons recalled going over the games of the 1954 Botvinnik–Smyslov world championship match with him.