World Chess Championship 1921
The 1921 World Chess Championship was played between José Raúl Capablanca and Emanuel Lasker. It was played in Capablanca's native Havana from March 18 to April 28. Capablanca won the match by a score of 9-5 (4 wins, 0 losses, 10 draws) to become the third World Chess Champion. Partly due to World War I, negotiations for this match took nearly 10 years. Lasker had been the World Champion since 1894, and had successfully defended his world title five times, most recently in 1910. In 1911, 22-year-old Capablanca won the San Sebastián chess tournament ahead of most of the world's leading players apart from Lasker. Later that year he challenged Lasker to a match for the world title. Lasker was unwilling to play the traditional first-to-win-ten-games-type of match in the semi-tropical conditions of Havana, especially as drawn games were becoming more frequent and the match might last for over six months. He therefore made a counter-proposal: if neither player had a lead of at least two games by the end of the match, it should be considered a draw; the match should be limited to the best of thirty games, counting draws; except that if either player won six games and led by at least two games before thirty games were completed, he should be declared the winner; the champion should decide the venue and stakes, and should have the exclusive right to publish the games; the challenger should deposit a forfeit of US343,000 in 2022 values, based on income value); the time limit should be twelve moves per hour; play should be limited to two sessions of 21⁄2 hours each per day, five days a week. Capablanca objected to the time limit, the short playing times, the thirty-game limit, and especially the requirement that he must win by two games to claim the title, which he regarded as unfair. Lasker took offence at the terms in which Capablanca criticized the two-game lead condition and broke off negotiations, and until 1914 Lasker and Capablanca were not on speaking terms. However, at the St.
