Anatoly Karpov
Anatoli Yevgenyevich Karpov was born on May 23, 1951 in Zlatoust in the former Soviet Union. He learned to play chess at the age of 4. He was accepted into Mikhail Botvinnik's prestigious chess school at the age of 12. At 15, he became the youngest Soviet Nation Master, and went on to win his first international chess tournament several months later. In 1967, he placed 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 to win the World Junior Chess Championship with a score of 10 out of 11. He became a Grandmaster when he tied for 4th at an international tournament in Caracas, Venezuela.
In the 1970s, Karpov majorly improved his game. His ELO rating in 1971 was 2540. He then came in 2nd in the USSR Chess Championship and also placed 1st in the Leningrad Interzonal Tournament in 1973. By this time his ELO rating had shot up to 2660, and he qualified for the 1974 Candidates cycle. This determined who was allowed to challenge Bobby Fischer, the reigning World Champion.
In the first Candidates match, Karpov beat beat Lev Polugaevsky by +3=5. In the next round, he defeated former World Championo Boris Spassky +4 -1=6. Russian player Viktor Korchnoi was his opponent in the Candidates final. Karpov prevailed +3 -2=19. He had earned the right to challenge FIscher for the World Championship.
Fischer drew up a list of 10 demands, chief among them the provisions that draws wouldn't count, the first to 10 victories wins, and if the score was tied 9-9, the champion would keep the title. The International Chess Federation (FIDE) refused at first, but eventually conceded the first two. However, Fischer demanded all or nothing, and when FIDE refused, he resigned his title. Negotiations fell through when Karpov later attempted to set up another match with him. Fischer scorned Karpov and Kasparov as inferior players, nevertheless, Karpov was now World Champion. Many accused Karpov of being a "paper world champion"; that he had earned the title in a ceremony, but not over a chessboard. He desperately tried to prove that he was worthy of the title. He participated in nearly every major tournament for the next 10 years. He created the most phenomenal streak of tournament wins against the strongest players in the world. He held the record for most consecutive tournament victories (9) until it was broken by Garry Kasparov (14).
Karpov's first title defense was against Viktor Korchnoi in 1978 at Baguio in the Philippines. A vast array of psychologicall tricks were used during the match, from Karpov's Dr. Zukhar who attempted to hypnotize Korchnoi during the game, to Korchnoi's mirror glasses to ward off the hypnotic stare, Korchnoi's offering to play under the Jolly Roger flag when he was denied the right to play under Switzerland's, to Karpov's yogurt supposedly being used to send him secret messages, to Korchnoi inviting two local cult members (on trial for attempted murder) into the hall as members of his team. The off-board antics are better remembered than the actual chess match. Karpov narrowly won the match 6-5 with 21 draws. Three years later, they met again in Meran-Merano, Italy. This time the psychological trick was the arrest of Korchnoi's son for evading conscription. Again the politics off the board overshadowed the games, but this time Karpov easily won (11-7, +6 -2 =10) in what is remembered to be the "Masacre of Merano".
Karpov's tournament career also reached a peak at the exceptional Montreal "Super-Grandmaster" tournament in 1979, where he ended joint first with Mikhail Tal ahead of a field of superb grandmasters like Jan Timman, Ljubomir Ljubojevic, Boris Spassky, and Lubomir Kavalek. Meanwhile, he had also won the prestigious Linares tournament in 1981 (and again in 1994), the Tilburg tournament in 1977, 1979, 1980, 1982, and 1983, and the Soviet Championship in 1976 and 1983 (and again in 1988).
Karpov had cemented his position as the world's best player and world champion when Garry Kasparov arrived on the scene. In 1984, they played in their first World Championship match. After Game 48, Karpov suffered a physical collapse, having lost 22 lb over the course of the match. The FIDE President controversially terminated the match, which had lasted an unprecedented four months with five wins for Karpov, three for Kasparov, and a staggering forty draws. A rematch was set for the following year. In a hard fight, Karpov lost his title 11 to 13 in the 1985 match, ending his ten-year reign as champion.
Karpov remained a formidable opponent for most of the eighties. He fought Kasparov in three more World Championship matches in 1986 (held in London and Leningrad), 1987 (held in Seville), and 1990 (held in Lyon and New York City). All three matches were extremely close (the scores were 12.5 to 11.5, 12 to 12, and 12.5 to 11.5). In all three matches Karpov had winning chances up to the very last games. In particular, the 1987 Seville match featured an astonishing blunder by Kasparov in the 23rd game, and should have led to Karpov's winning the title. Instead, in the final game, needing only a draw to win the title, Karpov blundered on his 33rd and 64th moves and lost, ending the match in a draw and allowing Kasparov to keep the title. The overall game score between them stayed virtually even until the late 1990s, when the score shifted decisively towards Kasparov. Currently, in their 235 formal games played, Karpov has 23 wins, 33 losses, and an incredible 179 draws. In their five world championship matches, Karpov has 19 wins, 21 losses, and 104 draws in 144 games.
In 1992, Karpov lost a Candidates Match against Nigel Short. But in 1993, Kasparov and Short split from FIDE. Karpov regained the FIDE World Champion title by beating Jan Timman, the loser of the Candidates final against Short. He defended his title against Gata Kamsky (+6 -3 =9) in 1996. In 1999, FIDE largely scrapped the old system of Candidate Matches, instead having a large knock-out event in which a large number of players contested short matches against each other over just a few weeks. Karpov resigned his title in anger over the new rules. Alexander Khalifman became FIDE World Champion by winning the tournament of 1999. In the January 2006 FIDE rating list, he is 29th in the world with an ELO rating of 2672.
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