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Almanac | |
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By Dan Schifrin
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Near Champions, Part Two: Akiba
Rubinstein
Second in a series about great players who never
became world champion | |
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Akiba
Rubinstein | Sometimes a war gets in the way, sometimes it’s money,
and sometimes it’s another challenger. For Akiba Rubinstein
(1882-1961), one of the best players to fall short of winning
a world championship, his lack of fundraising skills, the
outbreak of World War I and the sudden emergence of future
world champion Alexander Alekhine created, at different points
in his life, insurmountable obstacles on the road to the
highest peak of chess achievement.
Akiba Rubinstein was
born in 1882 in a small town on the border of Poland and
Russia, the youngest of 12 children. He came from a poor,
religious Jewish family, and it was expected that he would
become a rabbi, the only intellectual profession open to
someone with Rubinstein’s background. But while he was
studying in the local yeshiva he came across a chess book in
Hebrew, and at the relatively late age of 16 became hooked.
Rubinstein began to make a name for himself soon after with a
well-known win against Georg Salwe (some say it may have been
the less daunting G. Bartoszkiewicz) in Lodz in 1901, and in
1905 earned his master ranking with a shared first prize in
the Barmen Hauptturnier. His successes increased from year to
year, and in 1912 he shocked the world by winning four major
events: San Sebastian, Piestany, Breslau, and
Vilnius.
Brimming with confidence, Rubinstein
challenged world champion Emanuel Lasker to a match, and the
date was set for the autumn of 1914, assuming Rubinstein could
raise his share of the purse, which amounted to a steep
$2,500. But Rubinstein stumbled badly during an intervening
tournament in St. Petersburg, perhaps a result of his
well-documented nervousness, and the loss only made the money
harder to come by. Whatever chances Rubinstein still had of
raising the funds vanished in August of 1914 when World War I
was declared, and international chess was indefinitely put on
hold. |
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Rubinstein, 1909 |
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early 1920s were kind to Rubinstein, and the 40-year-old
player had important wins against the two strongest younger
players, Alekhine and Efim Bogoljubow, who played each other
for the world championship in 1929 and 1934. But when he
challenged Jose Capablanca, who had beaten Lasker for the
world championship in 1921, he once again could not raise the
proper funds, and the opportunity vanished.
As the
1920s wore on Rubinstein achieved less consistent results, and
the presence of the now dominant Alekhine, who beat Capablanca
in a world championships match in 1927 and kept his crown
until his death in 1946, was to be the final
obstacle.
Rubinstein retired from chess in 1932, having
earned little money over the course of his lifetime. He died
in Belgium in 1961.
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Rubinstein, 1925 |
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abound of Rubinstein’s shy and nervous character: that at
tournaments he often left the table so his presence wouldn’t
disturb his opponent; that the buzzing of a fly could force
him to make poor moves; that he never ate in public or shook
hands for fear of germs; that he tried to strangle the
grandmaster Richard Reti in the middle of the night, believing
him to be making strange noises to deprive him of
sleep.
If not for these neurotic fixations, Rubinstein
might very well have had the presence of mind to become the
world champion. But despite them, Rubinstein is still
considered one of the best players ever, a true artist of the
game. His style was extremely pleasing aesthetically, he
introduced many opening game innovations into master play, and
he was perhaps the best endgame player ever, certainly
unsurpassed when using rooks.
Rubinstein has probably
left more model games behind than any other player. His game
against Gersz Rotlewi in Lodz, Poland in 1907 is considered
one of the best games of the century. And at the
Teplitz-Schonau tournament in 1922 he won brilliancy prizes
for four games, an extremely unusual occurence. It was also
typical of Rubinstein’s genius that the first time he played
world champions Lasker and Capablanca he beat
them.
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See related articles:
Fischer vs. Spassky: World Chess Championship, 1972
(5/20/2000)
The Game is Adjourned… (4/28/2000)
A Brief History of the World Chess Championship: Middle
Game (5/20/2000)
Near Champions, Part One: Siegbert Tarrasch (6/2/2000)
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