Capablanca, José Raúl

Ca·pa·blan·ca (kä'pə-blängʹkə), José Raúl. 1888-1942.

Cuban chess master who was world champion from 1921 to 1927.

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▪ Cuban chess player

born November 19, 1888, Havana, Cuba

died March 8, 1942, New York, New York, U.S.

  chess master who won the world championship (1921) from Emanuel Lasker (Lasker, Emanuel) and lost it (1927) to Alexander Alekhine (Alekhine, Alexander).

      Capablanca learned the moves of chess at the age of four by watching his father play, and he went on to defeat Cuba's best player in 1901. He attended Columbia University in New York City in 1906–07 and in 1913 joined the Cuban diplomatic service, an occupation that facilitated his chess career by permitting him to travel to European meccas of chess. Remarkably, in active tournament competition from 1916 until 1924, Capablanca did not lose a single game. He was also proficient at baseball, bridge, and tennis. Capablanca was felled by a stroke while watching a game at the Manhattan Chess Club and died the next day. His chess style had a deceptive appearance of simplicity; at his best, he could make the defeat of another master look effortless.

Additional Reading

Capablanca wrote several primers for students of the game, but he never produced a definitive best-games collection. H. Golombek, Capablanca's Hundred Best Games of Chess (1947, reprinted 1989), is a representative sample of the master's games. Edward Winter, Capablanca (1989), is an exhaustively researched biography.

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