Echesspedia

German chess player, chess composer and chess journalist. One of the best German Masters of his time. Named Richard the Fifth because of his fifth-place finishes in many tournaments. Graduated from Berlin University where he studied modern languages. His first victory was his first participation in the Berlin City Championship in 1891. Moved to London in 1892, where he worked as a language teacher for about ten years.

He began to participate in the international tournaments since the middle 1880s with some interesting results like the third place in Leipzig 1894 behind Siegbert Tarrasch and Lipke, and seventh in Hastings in 1895. Played a match with Jacques Mieses and defeated him by 6-3. Later, took part in the chess events less often as he had problems with his eyes (his right eye was blind, and another one troubled him as well). Nevertheless, he showed good results in Monte Carlo in 1902 and 1903, being fourth and fifth, respectively, shared fifth-sixth positions in Ostende 1905 and was the sixth in 1907, in Carlsbad 1907 was equal seventh, Vienna and Prague 1908 was the fifth, in Hamburg 1910 shared the fifth-sixth places, was the third in Breslau 1922, in Karlovy Vary 1923 was the ninth. His best achievement in his chess career was his brilliant victory at Carlsbad in 1911 ahead of Akiba Rubinstein, Carl Schlechter and Milan Vidmar. In the period of 1902-10, he took the fifth place in 15 tournaments, for which he even got the nickname Richard the Fifth.

In 1909, he beat Bardeleben by 4-2 and in 1910 by 7-3, in 1920 he defeated Jacques Mieses by 6-1, in 1914 won over Frank Marshall by 1½-0½, in 1914 scored a victory by 5-1 from Rudolf Spielmann. In 1921, he played a match with Alexander Alekhine and drew by the score 3-3. He lost matches to Mikhail Chigorin, Nelson Pillsbury and José Raul Capablanca.

He is the author of several books including the famous book on 1907 Ostend Chess Tournament.

He was considered to be a player of positional style, keen understanding of play. He often joked that he could see better with his one eye than others with two. He made an opening contribution to the last edition of the Handbook.