Capablanca won the match by a score of 9-5 (4 wins, 0 losses, 10 draws) to become the third World Chess Champion.

In 1911, 22-year-old Capablanca won the San Sebastián chess tournament ahead of most of the world's leading players apart from Lasker.

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

[1] In 1912, Akiba Rubinstein emerged as a potential challenger when he won the three strongest tournaments that year, at San Sebastian, Breslau and Pistyan.

Rubinstein had difficulty finding the money; eventually a match was arranged for October 1914, but it did not take place because of the outbreak of World War I.