About this Site
I first discovered Lasca in an article in the British Sunday Times magazine, in a column devoted to games called Timewaster by Tantalus[1].
While at University in Cambridge in 1973 I founded the Clare College Laskers Association with two friends, Jeremy Wilde and Charles Matthews, and it had about thirty members from all over the university. It organised tournaments and published three issues of a newsletter.
By chance while doing other work I found a copy of Emanuel Lasker's original four-page booklet about the game in the Cambridge University Library[2]. That prompted me to correct the name of the game subsequently to 'Lasca'.
In 1976 and 1977 I published two articles about Lasca in the British magazine Games & Puzzles[3], and the section About Lasca on this site is based on the first of these articles.
In 1999 I set up a small web site "The Game of Lasca" hosted on my company's web site at http://research.interface.co.uk/lasca/index.htm. The site remained unchanged until 2011 when I happened to discover that the domain name lasca.org was available. This prompted me to try and create a definitive Lasca site incorporating everything I have discovered about the game to date.
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Angerstein of the University of Düsseldorf has researched the history of Lasca[4], and has kindly given me permission to include information from his publications in this site; I hope to add this at some point in the future.
- ^ The Fast & Furious Game of Laskers, Time Waster by Tantalus, Sunday Times Magazine, date unknown.
- ^ Emanuel Lasker: Rules of 'Lasca' - the Great Military Game, 1911.
- ^ David Johnson-Davies: Lasca - A little-known abstract game, Games and Puzzles magazine, No. 44, January 1976, pages 6-9.
- ^ Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Angerstein: Laska, ein strategisches Verstandesspiel. Chapter 13 of "Emanuel Lasker: Denker, Weltenbürger, Schachweltmeister", edited by Richard Forster, Stefan Hansen und Michael Negele. Exzelsior Verlag, Berlin 2009.