Jose Raoul Capablanca, Cuba, 1921-27
Capablanca attended Columbia University in New York, studying engineering. During that time, he beat the best American player, Frank Marshall, handily. After university, Capablanca was appointed to the Cuban Foreign Office as a commercial attache, a job which gave him the opportunity to travel abroad and to take part in chess events around the world. He was a very handsome and debonair gentleman. He was highly intelligent and charismatic. Capablanca's games are often considered the finest examples of how clear and honest chess can be. Some are models of perfection. Others are works of pure art. Inorganically, he died while playing chess at the Manhattan Chess Club in New York on March 8, 1942. Though he had written little, his influence on the game had been, and remains, enormous. His favorite openings were the Queen's Gambit and the Nimzo-Indian. |
Capablanca
may well have been the greatest natural chess player the world has ever seen.
Born in Havana in 1888, he learned chess by watching his father play. He first
beat his father, and avid chess player, where he was only four years old.