Jose Raul Capablanca is the 3rd official world chess champion, a chess prodigy and considered by many as one of the greatest player of all time by his exceptional endgame skill and published a book entitled “The Chess Fundamental” which considered as the best chess book according to Mikhail Botvinnik.
He was born on November 29, 1888 at Havana, Cuba. He was 2nd child and came from the wealthy family. He learned to play chess at age of 4 by watching his dad playing with his friends. He beat Cuban Champion Juan Corzo at the age of 13. In 1905, he easily passed the entrance exam at Columbia University, he enrolled and took Chemical Engineering. He represented the Columbia on top board in intercollegiate chess. In 1908, he left Columbia to devote himself to full-time chess.
He played simultaneous exhibitions with 96.4% performance higher than Geza Maroczy and Frank Marshall. This performance lead to match with Frank Marshall, the US Champion in 1909. He won the match with 8 wins, 1 loss and 14 draws. His victory gave him an invitation to the 1911 San Sebastian Tournament (a high class tournament) which he got the 1st prize. In 1911, after the victory at Sebastian 1911, he arranged for World Championship match against the current World Champion Emanuel Lasker but became unsuccessful due to the terms and conditions. His performance (13/13) at New York 1913 was recorded at the Guinness world of record for chess. Over the several years he had strong series of tournament results and became undefeated from Feb 1916 to Mar 1924.
In January 1920, Lasker and Capablanca signed an agreement for 1921 World Championship match. It was set at Havana, Cuba with huge amount of fund $25,000. He got the world title in this match with 4 win, 0 losses and 10 draws.
In 1922, he gave a simultaneous exhibition in Cleverland against 103 opponents, the largest in history at that time with 102 wins and 1 draw. He won London 1922, there, he proposed a regulation for future World Chess Championship which signed by top players.
In 1927, he was arranged for World Championship match to Alexander Alekhine, the winner will be the one who get the first 6 points excluding the draws with $10,000 prize plus $2,000 appearance fee for him at Buenos Aires, Argentina where he lost the world title. The result was 3 wins, 25 draws and 6 losses. He tried many attempts for the rematch but the all of them became unsuccessful, no rematch was made.
In March 8, 1942, he died and buried at Havana’s Colon Cemetery in Havana, Cuba.
There are 1213 games listed in the chessbase.
Let’s look of his best games which feature in our GMG page.
https://www.chess.com/blog/GMG29/the-immortal-game
By Coach Gerald Ferriol