George Duke wrote on Thu, Jul 3, 2008 05:10 PM UTC:
We list at other article the reformists Alexandre 1820's, Bird 1870's,
Lasker 1910's, Capablanca 1920's, Maura 1960's, and Fischer 1990's.
None of them can be said to have succeeded in their advocacy, but what did they do anyway? In particular, Lasker, why is second world champion on the
list? It is easy to locate Alexandre as forerunner of Fischer in
randomizing starting positions. With some conviction Bird and Capablanca
of course reinvent Carrera for their times. Maura's Modern reaches somewhat across
Latin America. What about Dr. Emanuel Lasker,
mathematician, friend of Einstein? When Capablanca defeated Lasker to become third Champion, Capablanca tossed around one of his first ideas for reform. It was simply to reverse Bishop and Knight. Lasker then and earlier advocated scoring wins differently by type. ''In order to prevent the decay of chess by the frequent occurrence of drawn games finer nuances of difference of execution must show themselves in the result, and stalemates should be considered and counted in the estimating of scores for tournament purposes, wins by themselves to count less than enforced mates.'' --Lasker's idea summarized by Reti (Source: Richard Reti, 'Modern Ideas in Chess') The ironies are that some GMs, but not variantists, might know of Lasker's scoring proposals, and that today that is the extent of debate within OrthoChess circles, how to reward points differently -- the same topic Lasker brought up 90 years ago.
