FICGS - Anatoly Karpov - Encyclopedia

Anatoli Yevgenyevich Karpov (Анато́лий Евге́ньевич Ка́рпов) (born May 23, 1951) is a Russian chess grandmaster and former World Champion. He is the most successful tournament player of all time, and as of July 2005 he has 161 first-place finishes to his credit. From 1978 to 1998 he played in every FIDE World Championship match. His overall professional record is 1,118 wins, 287 losses, and 1,480 draws in 3,163 games. His peak ELO rating is 2780.

Karpov was born on May 23, 1951 in Zlatoust in the former Soviet Union and learned to play chess at the age of 4. At age 12 he was accepted into Mikhail Botvinnik's prestigious chess school. Ironically, Botvinnik had this to say about a young Karpov: "The boy doesn't have a clue about chess, and there's no future at all for him in this profession." Karpov proved him wrong by becoming the youngest Soviet National Master in history at 15, and won in his first international chess tournament several months later. In 1967 he took 5th in the Soviet Junior Chess Championship and won the European Junior Chess Championship later that same year. In 1969 he became the first Soviet player since Boris Spassky (1955) to win the World Junior Chess Championship with a score of 10 out of 11. Soon afterwards he tied for 4th place at an international tournament in Caracas, Venezuela and became a Grandmaster.

The 1970s showed a major improvement in his game. His ELO rating shot up from 2540 in 1971 to 2660 in 1973, when he came in 2nd in the USSR Chess Championship and placed first in the Leningrad Interzonal Tournament. The latter qualified him for the 1974 Candidates cycle, which determined who was allowed to challenge the reigning World Champion, Bobby Fischer.

Karpov beat Lev Polugaevsky by +3=5 in the first Candidates match to face former World Champion Boris Spassky in the next round. Karpov was on record saying that he believed Spassky would easily beat him and win the Candidates cycle to face Fischer, and that he (Karpov) would win the following Candidates cycle in 1977.

Most expected the Spassky-Karpov match to be a one-sided rout by the ex-champ Spassky. Although Spassky won the first game as black in good style, tenacious and aggressive play from Karpov secured him a win +4-1=6. Karpov was certainly not hurt by the fact that Spassky's chief opening analyst, 1955 Soviet Champion Efim Geller, defected to Karpov's side several months before the match.

The Candidates final was against fellow Russian Viktor Korchnoi, a notable fighting player. Intense games were fought, including one "opening laboratory" win against the Sicilian Dragon. Karpov went 3–0 up but tired towards the end and allowed Korchnoi two wins, but Karpov prevailed +3-2=19. Thus he won the right to challenge Fischer for the World Championship.

Though the world championship match between the young Soviet prodigy and the incomparably dominant American Fischer was highly anticipated, the match never came about. Fischer drew up a list of ten demands, chief among them the provisions that draws wouldn't count, the first to ten victories wins, and if the score was tied 9–9 the champion would retain the crown. This means that candidate needed two wins more than the reigning champion because narrowest possible win for him is 10–8. The International Chess Federation (FIDE) flatly refused at first, but eventually conceded the first two. However, Fischer demanded all or nothing, and when FIDE refused to give into the third demand, Fischer resigned his crown, to the huge disappointment of the chess world. Karpov later attempted to set up another match with Fischer, but all the negotiations fell through. Fischer never did play Karpov (or Kasparov, for that matter) and scorned them as inferior players. This thrust the young Karpov into the role of World Champion without defeating the reigning champion, which lead some chess pundits to accuse Karpov of being a "paper world champion"—that he had earned the title in a ceremony, but not over a chessboard.

When Garry Kasparov was in a bitter struggle for the world championship with Karpov, he often reminded others that Karpov won the title by default. But while preparing a monumental book series Kasparov: On My Great Predecessors, Kasparov argued that Karpov would have had the better chances, because he had beaten Spassky convincingly and was a new breed of tough professional, and indeed had higher quality games, while Fischer had been inactive for three years. Critics argue that Kasparov was trying to boost his own prestige by boosting that of the man he defeated. Spassky thought that Fischer would have won in 1975 but Karpov would have qualified again and beaten Fischer in 1978. Zsuzsa Polgar thinks Fischer would have won very narrowly in 1975 due to his greater experience.

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