The tournament celebrated the tenth anniversary of the St. Petersburg Chess Society. The president of the organizing committee was Peter Petrovich Saburov

Peter Petrovich Saburov

Peter Petrovich Saburov was a Russian chess master and organizer.He was a son of Peter Alexandrovich Saburov, a diplomat and chess organizer. The November 1911 American Chess Bulletin wrote: "Peter Petrovich Saburov, President of the far-famed St Petersburg Chess Club was born in St Petersburg on...

. Members of the committee were: Boris Maliutin

Boris Maliutin

Boris Evgenievich Maliutin was a Russian chess master.He played many tournaments in Saint Petersburg...

, Peter Alexandrovich Saburov

Peter Alexandrovich Saburov

Peter Alexandrovich Saburov was a diplomat, collector of ancient Greek sculpture and antiquities, and a strong amateur chess player and patron of chess tournaments, as an honorary President of the St Petersburg Chess Club.As the Tsarist Russian envoy to Greece, he assembled an outstanding...

, and O. Sossnitzky. They intended to invite the present top twenty chess players, with world champion Emanuel Lasker

Emanuel Lasker

Emanuel Lasker was a German chess player, mathematician, and philosopher who was World Chess Champion for 27 years...

, challenger José Raúl Capablanca

José Raúl Capablanca

José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera was a Cuban chess player who was world chess champion from 1921 to 1927. One of the greatest players of all time, he was renowned for his exceptional endgame skill and speed of play...

, and the two winners of the All-Russian Masters' Tournament 1913/14 (Alexander Alekhine

Alexander Alekhine

Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine was the fourth World Chess Champion. He is often considered one of the greatest chess players ever.By the age of twenty-two, he was already among the strongest chess players in the world. During the 1920s, he won most of the tournaments in which he played...

 and Aron Nimzowitsch

Aron Nimzowitsch

Aron Nimzowitsch was a Russian-born Danish unofficial chess grandmaster and a very influential chess writer...

). Unfortunately, Amos Burn

Amos Burn

Amos Burn was an English chess player, one of the world's leading players at the end of the 19th century, and a chess writer....

, Richard Teichmann

Richard Teichmann

Richard Teichmann was a German chess master.He was known as "Richard the Fifth" because he often finished in fifth place in tournaments. But in Karlsbad 1911, he scored a convincing win, crushing Akiba Rubinstein and Carl Schlechter with the same line of the Ruy Lopez...

, and Szymon Winawer

Szymon Winawer

Szymon Abramowicz Winawer , born in Warsaw, Poland, was a leading chess player who won the German Chess Championship in 1883...

 declined for reasons, such as old age. From the other side, Oldřich Duras

Oldrich Duras

Oldřich Duras was a leading Czech chess master of the early 20th century...

, Géza Maróczy

Géza Maróczy

Géza Maróczy was a leading Hungarian chess Grandmaster, one of the best players in the world in his time. He was also a practicing engineer.-Early career:...

, Carl Schlechter

Carl Schlechter

Carl Schlechter was a leading Austrian chess master and theoretician at the turn of the 20th century. He is best known for drawing a World Chess Championship match with Emanuel Lasker.-Early life:...

, Rudolf Spielmann

Rudolf Spielmann

Rudolf Spielmann was an Austrian-Jewish chess player of the romantic school, and chess writer.-Career:He was a lawyer but never worked as one....

, Savielly Tartakower

Savielly Tartakower

Ksawery Tartakower was a leading Polish and French chess Grandmaster. He was also a leading chess journalist of the 1920s and 30s...

, Milan Vidmar

Milan Vidmar

Milan Vidmar was a Slovene electrical engineer, chess player, chess theorist, philosopher, and writer. He was a specialist in power transformers and transmission of electric current.- Biography :...

 and Max Weiss

Max Weiss

Miksa Weisz was an Austrian chess player born in the Kingdom of Hungary.Weiss was born in Sereď. Moving to Vienna, he studied mathematics and physics at the university, and later taught those subjects....

 could not accept due to tensions of Russia with Austria-Hungary in the year 1914. Finally, eleven top players from Germany, France, United Kingdom, United States, Cuba, and Russian Empire were accepted.
According to the unofficial Chessmetrics

Chessmetrics

Chessmetrics is a system for rating chess players devised by Jeff Sonas. It is intended as an improvement over the Elo rating system.-Implementation:...

 ratings, the tournament was (as of March 2005) the 13th-strongest tournament in history (in terms of the top players participating), and the 5th-strongest ever held up until that time.

The players were well compensated for their expenses. Lasker got an additional 4500 Rubles for playing in his first tournament in five years. Prizes or money for draws and wins had to be earned. The main event lasted from 21 April to 22 May 1914. The games were played at the St. Petersburg Chess Club in the afternoon and evening. The time control was 30 moves in 2 hours, followed by 22 moves in 1½ hours and 15 moves per hour for the rest of the game.

Preliminaries

The preliminaries were held as a single round-robin

Round-robin

The term round-robin was originally used to describe a document signed by multiple parties in a circle to make it more difficult to determine the order in which it was signed, thus preventing a ringleader from being identified...

 tournament, with the top five places qualifying for the final. Capablanca played superior chess in the preliminaries. The great surprise was the elimination of Akiba Rubinstein

Akiba Rubinstein

Akiba Kiwelowicz Rubinstein was a famous Polish chess Grandmaster at the beginning of the 20th century. He was scheduled to play a match with Emanuel Lasker for the world championship in 1914, but it was cancelled because of the outbreak of World War I...

. The elite of Sankt Petersburg was present on a grand banquet at the end of the preliminaries. Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...

 gave a piano recital.

The results and standings:

#	Player	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	Total
1		*	½	½	1	½	1	½	1	1	1	1	8
2		½	*	½	½	½	0	1	½	1	1	1	6½
3		½	½	*	½	½	1	½	1	1	0	1	6½
4		0	½	½	*	1	½	1	½	½	½	1	6
5		|½	½	½	0	*	1	½	½	1	1	½	6
6		0	1	0	½	0	*	½	½	½	1	1	5
7		½	0	½	0	½	½	*	½	½	1	1	5
8		0	½	0	½	½	½	½	*	0	½	1	4
9		0	0	0	½	0	½	½	1	*	0	1	3½
10		0	0	1	½	0	0	0	½	1	*	½	3½
11		0	0	0	0	½	0	0	0	0	½	*	1

Final

The final tournament was a double-round tournament among the five players. Since the results of the preliminaries carried over into the finals, Capablanca with a 1½-point lead was a heavy favorite to win the tournament. In the first half of the finals, Lasker narrowly escaped a loss against Capablanca, which would have virtually decided the tournament. Lasker made up half a point of the difference between himself and Capablanca, with the scores standing at Capablanca 11, Lasker 10, Alekhine 8½, Marshall 7, Tarrasch 6½.

In the 19th round, Lasker won a now-famous game against Capablanca with the Exchange Variation

Exchange variation

In chess, an exchange variation is a type of opening in which there is an early, voluntary exchange of pawns or pieces. Such variations are often quieter than other lines because the early release of tension minimizes the possibility of surprise tactics or sharp, forcing lines, particularly where...

 of the Ruy Lopez

Ruy Lopez

The Ruy Lopez, also called the Spanish Opening or Spanish Game, is a chess opening characterised by the moves:-History:The opening is named after the 16th century Spanish priest Ruy López de Segura, who made a systematic study of this and other openings in the 150-page book on chess Libro del...

, trading queens on the sixth move (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Bxc6 dxc6 5.d4 exd4 6.Qxd4 Qxd4 7.Nxd4) and then outplaying Capablanca in the endgame. Luděk Pachman

Ludek Pachman

Luděk Pachman was a Czechoslovak-German chess grandmaster, chess writer, and political activist. In 1972, after being imprisoned and tortured almost to death by the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, he was allowed to emigrate to West Germany...

 remarks that Lasker's choice of opening was a masterstroke, since Capablanca was intent on simplifying the game to obtain a draw, and the line Lasker chose requires Black to play actively in order to exploit his advantage of the bishop pair and not allow White to exploit his superior pawn structure. Capablanca, intent on avoiding complications, played too passively and was routed by Lasker. In the following round, a shaken Capablanca lost as White from a superior position against Tarrasch. This allowed Lasker (who scored a remarkable 7/8) to overtake Capablanca, winning the tournament by a half point.

Lasker won 1200 rubles, Capablanca 800 rubles, Alekhine 500 rubles, Tarrasch 300 rubles, and Marshall 250 rubles. In addition, there was a Brilliancy Prize Fund, of which Capablanca was awarded 125 rubles for his win over Bernstein, Tarrasch was awarded 75 rubles (Second Prize) for his win over Nimzowitsch, and Blackburne won 50 rubles (Special Brilliancy Prize) for his win over Nimzowitsch. The prize fund was more than covered by the record "gate" of 6,000 rubles from the spectators.

The final results and standings:

#	Player	Prel.	1	2	3	| 4	| 5	Total
1		6½	**	½1	11	1½	11	13½
2		8	½0	**	½1	10	11	13
3		6	00	½0	**	11	1½	10
4		6½	0½	01	00	**	0½	8½
5		6	00	00	0½	1½	**	8