His contemporaries used to say that Lasker used a "psychological" approach to the game, and even that he sometimes deliberately played inferior moves to confuse opponents.

Lasker was a research mathematician who was known for his contributions to commutative algebra, which included proving the primary decomposition of the ideals of polynomial rings.

At the age of eleven he was sent to study mathematics in Berlin, where he lived with his brother Berthold, eight years his senior, who taught him how to play chess.

[8][9] At New York City in 1893, he won all thirteen games,[10][11][12] one of the few times in chess history that a player has achieved a perfect score in a significant tournament.

[19] Lasker challenged Siegbert Tarrasch, who had won three consecutive strong international tournaments (Breslau 1889, Manchester 1890, and Dresden 1892), to a match.

[22][23][24] On May 26, Lasker thus became the second formally recognized World Chess Champion and confirmed his title by beating Steinitz even more convincingly in their rematch in 1896–97 (ten wins, two losses, and five draws).

Lasker's difficulty in getting backing may have been caused by hostile pre-match comments from Gunsberg and Leopold Hoffer,[12] who had long been a bitter enemy of Steinitz.

[4] Later, at St Petersburg (1914), he overcame a 1½-point deficit to finish ahead of the rising stars, Capablanca and Alexander Alekhine, who later became the next two World Champions.

But they note that according to the Austrian chess historian Michael Ehn, Lasker agreed to forgo the plus two provision in view of the match being subsequently reduced to only 10 games.

However, at the 1914 St. Petersburg tournament, Capablanca proposed a set of rules for the conduct of World Championship matches, which were accepted by all the leading players, including Lasker.

Lasker gained his abitur (high school graduation certificate) at Landsberg an der Warthe, now a Polish town named Gorzów Wielkopolski but then part of Prussia.

[54] In 1901 he presented his doctoral thesis Über Reihen auf der Convergenzgrenze ("On Series at Convergence Boundaries") at Erlangen and in the same year it was published by the Royal Society.

[59] In 1906 Lasker published a booklet titled Kampf (Struggle),[60] in which he attempted to create a general theory of all competitive activities, including chess, business and war.

The American Chess Bulletin speculated that the conditions were not sufficiently unpopular to warrant resignation of the title, and that Lasker's real concern was that there was not enough financial backing to justify his devoting nine months to the match.

[71] When Lasker resigned the title in favor of Capablanca he was unaware that enthusiasts in Havana had just raised $20,000 to fund the match provided it was played there.

In the tenth game, Lasker as White played a position with an Isolated Queen Pawn but failed to create the necessary activity and Capablanca reached a superior ending, which he duly won.

[4] During the Moscow 1925 chess tournament, Lasker received a telegram informing him that the drama written by himself and his brother Berthold, Vom Menschen die Geschichte [de] ("History of Mankind"), had been accepted for performance at the Lessing theatre in Berlin.

[80] In 1930, Lasker was a special correspondent for Dutch and German newspapers[81] reporting on the Culbertson-Buller bridge match during which he became a registered teacher of the Culbertson system.

[84][85] After a short stay in England, in 1935 they were invited to live in the USSR by Nikolai Krylenko, the Commissar of Justice who had been responsible for show trials and, in his other capacity as Sports Minister, was an enthusiastic supporter of chess.

[89] In August 1937, Martha and Emanuel Lasker decided to leave the Soviet Union, and they moved, via the Netherlands, to the United States (first Chicago, next New York) in October 1937.

Reuben Fine describes Lasker's choice of opening, the Exchange Variation of the Ruy Lopez, as "innocuous but psychologically potent".

[4] Luděk Pachman writes that Lasker's choice presented his opponent with a dilemma: with only a ½ point lead, Capablanca would have wanted to play safe; but the Exchange Variation's pawn structure gives White an endgame advantage, and Black must use his bishop pair aggressively in the middlegame to nullify this.

In Capablanca's opinion, no player surpassed Lasker in the ability to assess a position quickly and accurately, in terms of who had the better prospects of winning and what strategy each side should adopt.

[103] In 1964, Chessworld magazine published an article in which future World Champion Bobby Fischer listed the ten greatest players in history.

[104] Fischer did not include Lasker in the list, deriding him as a "coffee-house player [who] knew nothing about openings and didn't understand positional chess".

The book Warriors of the Mind places him sixth, behind Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov, Fischer, Mikhail Botvinnik and Capablanca.

[120] He became notorious for demanding high fees for playing matches and tournaments, and he argued that players should own the copyright in their games rather than let publishers get all the profits.

[3][121] These demands initially angered editors and other players, but helped to pave the way for the rise of full-time chess professionals who earn most of their living from playing, writing and teaching.

His funeral service was held at the Riverside Memorial Chapel,[131] and he was buried at historic Beth Olam Cemetery, Queens, New York.

For there are few men who have had a warm interest in all the great human problems and at the same time kept their personality so uniquely independent.In Michael Chabon's alternate history mystery novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, the murdered man, Mendel Shpilman (born during the 1960s), being a chess enthusiast, uses the name "Emanuel Lasker" as an alias.