The Unbeaten Champion
By 1924, José Raúl Capablanca of Cuba was the undisputed master of world chess. He had taken the World Championship from Emanuel Lasker in 1921 after a match in Havana that Lasker eventually abandoned, and in the years before that match his tournament record had been almost supernatural in its consistency. From around 1916 onwards he had not lost a single tournament game, constructing a sequence of draws and victories that stretched across the turmoil of the First World War and into the relative stability of the early 1920s. His style was famously economical: where other famous chess players fought to create complications, Capablanca simplified, liquidated, and won endgames that others could not hold. He was widely regarded, by contemporaries including Lasker and Alekhine, as perhaps the most naturally gifted player the game had ever produced. Arriving in New York for the 1924 event, he was the clear favourite. The prospect of him losing to anyone in the field seemed remote.
New York 1924 — The Tournament Field
The New York 1924 tournament, held at the Alamac Hotel in Manhattan between March and April, was among the strongest events ever assembled to that point in chess history. The field of eleven players included Capablanca, Lasker, Réti, Alexander Alekhine, Frank Marshall, Efim Bogoljubov, and Savielly Tartakower. Each player faced every other twice in a double round-robin format. The event attracted enormous press coverage in the American newspapers, and the games were followed closely by chess clubs across Europe and the Americas. Lasker, despite being 56 years old and having been out of competitive play for some time, arrived in formidable shape. Alekhine, who would himself become World Champion three years later, was aggressive and dangerous. The World Chess Championships of the era attracted this calibre of field to major tournaments, and New York 1924 stands as one of the defining competitive gatherings of the interwar decades.
Réti and the Hypermodern Challenge
Richard Réti was a Czech-Austrian grandmaster and one of the principal theorists of the hypermodern school. Born in 1889 in Pezinok, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he was both a strong practical player and an influential writer, later producing the landmark theoretical work Masters of the Chess Board. The hypermodern school, of which Réti, Aron Nimzowitsch, and Savielly Tartakower were the leading voices, argued that direct central occupation was not the only path to a sound position. Pieces and fianchettoed bishops could control the centre from a distance; an opponent who over-committed pawns to the centre could find them targets rather than strengths. This was a direct theoretical affront to the classical tradition that Capablanca embodied. Réti had been developing and demonstrating his opening ideas in the early 1920s, and New York 1924 was the tournament in which those ideas would face their supreme test. He carried the Réti Opening, 1.Nf3 followed by 2.c4 and bishop fianchettoes, into the most scrutinised arena in the game.
The Game Itself
The game was played in round seven. Réti opened with 1.Nf3, and after 1...Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.g3 d5 the position took on the character of a Grünfeld-adjacent structure, with Capablanca opting for central counterplay and Réti manoeuvring on the flanks. The critical phase came in the middlegame, where Réti accumulated small positional advantages with great patience: a superior pawn structure, more active piece placement, and persistent pressure on the queenside. Capablanca, perhaps underestimating the danger or relying too heavily on his remarkable defensive technique, allowed the position to drift. Réti converted in 38 moves, winning a game that did not feature a single obvious blunder from the World Champion but rather a sustained positional squeezing that left Capablanca without adequate counterplay. It was the kind of controlled strategic domination that Capablanca himself usually inflicted on opponents. That it should be applied to him made the result all the more striking. The game is studied today as one of the famous chess games of the hypermodern era.
Aftermath and Tournament Result
Despite the loss to Réti, Capablanca recovered well and finished in second place with 14.5 points from 22 games. The tournament was won by Lasker, who scored 16 points in what many consider the greatest performance of his later career. Lasker's victory, achieved with quiet authority at an age when most professional players had long retired, was itself a sensation. Réti finished third with 13.5 points. For Capablanca, the defeat to Réti was a chastening moment, but he remained the World Champion and would defend his title. His eventual loss of the championship came in 1927 to Alexander Alekhine in Buenos Aires, in circumstances that remain among the most debated in World Chess Championships history. The 1924 New York tournament is preserved in detail in the tournament book edited by Hermann Helms, which remains a primary source for anyone studying the chess of this period.
Legacy and Historical Significance
The game between Réti and Capablanca at New York 1924 occupies a permanent place in the canon of chess history for reasons that go beyond the simple drama of an upset. It demonstrated that the hypermodern school had real practical teeth. The ideas that Réti and Nimzowitsch had been advancing in theory and tournament play were not merely provocative or eccentric; they could defeat the best player in the world. The game accelerated the theoretical revolution that transformed opening theory through the late 1920s and 1930s. Many of the openings played at the highest levels today, including the King's Indian Defence, the Nimzo-Indian, and the Réti Opening itself, owe their legitimacy partly to the validation provided by games like this one. For students of the game, Réti versus Capablanca 1924 is an object lesson in positional patience and the power of long-term strategic planning. The Staunton chess set that sat on the board that day carried pieces whose design had already become the universal language of serious chess, as standardised and recognised as the notation used to record every move.
Jaques of London — Making Chess Sets Since 1849
The Staunton pattern pieces, created by Jaques of London in 1849, were already the universal standard for serious chess by 1924. Every tournament game, every championship encounter, every casual game in the clubs and coffee houses of Europe was played on the Staunton design that Jaques had introduced just 75 years earlier. The pieces that carried Réti's knight to its decisive outpost, and that held Capablanca's position until it finally cracked, were the direct descendants of the pattern Howard Staunton endorsed and Jaques of London manufactured and refined across eight decades of competitive chess.
Shop Staunton Chess Sets →Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Why was Réti's win over Capablanca at New York 1924 considered such a major upset?
José Raúl Capablanca had gone undefeated in tournament play for nearly eight years before New York 1924. From the San Sebastian tournament of 1911 through to his World Championship match against Emanuel Lasker in 1921, and in the tournaments that followed, he had assembled the most formidable unbeaten record in the game's history. His technique was so precise, his endgame mastery so complete, that many contemporaries considered him virtually invincible. When Richard Réti defeated him in round seven of New York 1924, it shook the chess world. It was the first time the World Champion had lost a tournament game since before the First World War, and it validated the theoretical claims of the hypermodern school in the most dramatic way possible.
Q: What opening did Réti use against Capablanca in this famous game?
Réti opened with 1.Nf3, followed by 2.c4, launching what would become known as the Réti Opening. Rather than occupying the centre immediately with pawns, Réti fianchettoed his kingside bishop and sought to exert pressure on the centre from the flanks. This was a direct challenge to the classical principles that Capablanca embodied: occupy the centre, develop pieces, castle. By avoiding an immediate pawn confrontation, Réti forced Capablanca onto unfamiliar strategic ground. The World Champion responded with a solid but slightly inflexible setup, and Réti gradually outmanoeuvred him in a deeply strategic battle lasting 38 moves. The opening today bears Réti's name and remains a respected weapon at the highest levels of the game.
Q: Who won the New York 1924 tournament overall, and how did Capablanca finish?
Emanuel Lasker, the former World Champion who had held the title for 27 years before losing it to Capablanca in 1921, won the New York 1924 tournament with an outstanding score of 16 points from 22 games. It was a remarkable performance by a man then aged 56. Capablanca finished in second place, just half a point behind Lasker, despite the loss to Réti. Réti himself finished in third place with 13.5 points. Alexander Alekhine and Frank Marshall were also in the field. The tournament is remembered as one of the strongest and most important of the interwar period, featuring four of the world's top five players and producing some of the most celebrated games of the entire decade.
Q: What was the hypermodern school of chess, and how did this game illustrate its principles?
The hypermodern school emerged in the early 1920s as a deliberate challenge to the classical doctrines codified by Wilhelm Steinitz and refined by Siegbert Tarrasch. Where classical theory demanded early central pawn occupation with moves like 1.e4 or 1.d4, the hypermodernists argued that the centre could be controlled from a distance by pieces and fianchettoed bishops, allowing the opponent to overextend with pawns that could later be attacked and undermined. Key figures included Réti, Aron Nimzowitsch, and Savielly Tartakower. Réti's defeat of Capablanca was the movement's most visible proof of concept: the reigning World Champion, the foremost embodiment of classical precision, had been beaten by a system that refused to fight on classical terms. The game became a cornerstone text for every student of the hypermodern ideas.