Capablanca -- Lasker, Game 5 (continued)

Part 10 of a series recognizing the Centennial of Capablanca -- Lasker, World Chess Championship, Havana 1921. Part 9 has the game up to the diagram position below.

On 30 March 1921, José Raúl Capablanca took his position across a historic table from Emanuel Lasker in a room of the Casino de la Playa. Lasker's sealed move from the previous night's play was revealed on the board and game resumed.

Capablanca,José Raúl -- Lasker,Emanuel [D63]
World Championship 12th Havana (5), 29.03.1921

Black to move

After 31.h4

31...gxh4

I have sequenced the comments to reveal the changing assessments of the sealed move over time.

"[A]pparently the best." (Janowski)

"This was not good. Better 31...Kg6 32.hxg5 Ne4 33.Qd3 Qg4+ 34.Rg2 Qh4 35.Qb1 Kg7. The g5 pawn falls and Black is secure." (Lasker)

In British Chess Magazine (July 1921), George A. Thomas mentioned Lasker's suggestion, adding, "threatening perpetual check" after 34...Qh4.

"This was Lasker's sealed move. It was not the best. His chance to draw was to play Kg6. Any other continuation should lose." (Capablanca)

Myers: "This move (Kg6), Capablanca and Lasker agree, is Black's best chance. Not so. It loses just as readily as the move played in the game, which plainly does not solve Black's problems either."

The ChessBase DVD: Master Class, vol. 04: José Raúl Capablanca (2015), my source for Myers' annotation, also has a question mark after Kg6. Myers, I believe, is NM Hugh Myers (1930-2008), who is best known for innovative opening analysis. The DVD is an excellent resource, but it lists the annotators only by surname, and nothing by Myers is listed in the bibliography.

Garry Kasparov, My Great Predecessors, Part 1 (a book wholly lacking a bibliography) offers more:

It is usual to attach a question mark to [the text move--Kasparov then presents Lasker's analysis, and then:] At first sight here it is indeed impossible to convert the exchange advantage: the White king is exposed, and Black's queen and knight dominate. And yet White has a way to gain an advantage: 36.Qd1! Kg6 37.Qf3! (threatening Qf4) 37...Nxg5 38.Qg3 with good winning chances. So that 31...Kg6 was by no means better than the move in the game. (266)

32.Qxh4 Ng4 33.Qg5+ Kf8

White to move

34.Rf5

Capablanca and Lasker both stated in their books on the match that 34.Rd2 was strong: "quite strong" (Lasker) and "would have won" (Capablanca). Stockfish 13 prefers the text until it has longer to think, when it finds both moves equally strong.

34...h5

"Making use of the slight respite, Black unexpectedly creates counterplay." (Kasparov)

Not 34...Qxe3 35.Qxe3 Nxe3 36.Rf2 and 37.Re2 and White wins. (Lasker)

I. Linder and V. Linder, José Raúl Capablanca: 3rd World Chess Champion add the explanation that the rook, "would cut off the Black king from the queenside and help advance his own king towards the center" (82).

35.Qd8+ Kg7 36.Qg5+ Kf8 37.Qd8+ Kg7 38.Qg5+ Kf8

The triple occurrence of position would be a draw by today's rules. Linder and Linder state, "Black could have claimed a draw". I am not certain that he could. What was the rule in 1921? You will not find the rule in the FIDE Handbook. FIDE was created three years later. 

The rules for the London International Tournament of 1883 specified three-fold repetition of moves, and after the event, it was suggested to modify this to three-fold repetition of position (the modern rule). However, the Fifth American Chess Congress (1889) mentioned six-fold repetition, and William Steinitz's is not explicit about a draw by repetition in The Modern Chess Instructor, published that year. He mentions both perpetual check and repetition of moves.

Edward Winter, "Repetition of Position or Moves in Chess", Chess Notes (updated 30 July 2020) offers some of the critical detail concerning development of the rule, including references to rules governing other World Championship Matches that reference the German Handbuch. The rules for the match in Havana do not reference the Handbuch, nor any other set of general rules.

White to move

39.b3

Stronger was 39.Qxh5 (Kasparov).

The theme of Kasparov's annotations on this game is that Capablanca failed to put forth enough effort to make "detailed calculation of 'dangerous' variations", and that "slight inaccuracies harboured the germ" of his defeat by Alekhine (267).  

39...Qd6 40.Qf4 Qd1+ 41.Qf1 Qd7

White to move

Due to a notation error in Linder and Linder (they have 41...Qd2), they see a mate in nine that Capablanca overlooked. Capablanca's game score in his book on the match has 41...Q-Q2, which matches Lasker's Dd1-d7. 41...Qd7, that is.

42.Rxh5 Nxe3 43.Qf3 Qd4 44.Qa8+ Ke7 45.Qb7+

Black to move

45...Kf8??

What was the status of Lasker's clock?

Capablanca: "A blunder, which loses what would otherwise have been a drawn game. It will be noticed that it was Dr Lasker's forty-fifth move. He had very little time to think and, furthermore, by his own admission, he entirely misjudged the value of the position, believing that he had chances of winning, when, in fact, all he could hope for was a draw."

Lasker: "A terrible mistake. The assumption has been made on various occasions that my gross mistake was the result of a lack of time. But that was by no means the case. I had fifteen minutes to think about it, but I was unable to."

46.Qb8+ 1-0

Following this game, the Cuban Tourism Commission sweetened the prize fund for the match by 5,000 pesos (equal to $5,000 because President Mario García Menocal set the exchange rate of dollars to pesos at 1:1). This detail courtesy of the additional source that arrived in yesterday's mail. Miguel A. Sánchez, José Raúl Capablanca: A Chess Biography (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2015), 247.