KK1, KK2, and KK3

Getting back to my previous post, Overlapping Cycles in the 1980s, events surrounding the first four Kasparov - Karpov (KK) title matches, I closed with the comment,

While working on this last table I noted a few other points of interest, but ran out of time before I could investigate them further.

The first point of interest was a question: Given that Kasparov didn't participate in the 1982 USSR zonal, how did he qualify for the interzonal? I found the answer in his book 'Garry Kasparov on Garry Kasparov, Part 1: 1973-1985'. Short answer: he qualified by rating. Longer answer: see the page Zonals 1981-84 (C12).

The next point of interest was a forgotten fact. I had a vague recollection that around the time of the first three KK matches, FIDE tried to shorten the World Championship cycle from three years to two, but I couldn't recall the details. While I failed to find any confirmation one way or the other, I did spend some time reviewing Averbakh's 'Centre-Stage and Behind the Scenes: A Personal Memoir', a book I discussed last year in Averbakh on the World Championship. In it I found the following passage related to the organization of KK2 and KK3.

Averbakh p.221

Both of those book references, 'Kasparov on Kasparov' (p.513, four paragraphs) and Averbakh's 'A Personal Memoir' (p.214), reminded me that I had never really looked into the termination of KK1. Along with two well known essays by Edward Winter,

• Kasparov’s Child of Change (1987) and
• The Termination (1988++),

plus that first Kasparov autobiography,

• Child of Change (Hutchinson 1987, with Donald Trelford),

there are two more recent Kasparov autobiographical sources,

• Unlimited Challenge (Fontana 1990) and
• Kasparov on Modern Chess part 2; Kasparov vs Karpov, 1975-1985 (Everyman 2008).

Although the later discussions of the KK1 termination largely repeat Kasparov's 1987 account, and all three contain a fourth Kasparov account written in March 1985, they still deserve to be reviewed. On top of that, how well do these resources -- Averbakh, Kasparov, and Winter -- square with each other? I'll look at that another time.

Overlapping Cycles in the 1980s

While working on a post for my main blog, Kasparov TMER: Last updated 2014-05-19 [TMER: Tournament, Match, and Exhibition Record], I realized I had only a hazy recollection of the events surrounding the Kasparov - Karpov title matches played in the 1980s, especially the two overlapping cycles provoked by the termination of the 1984 match. My index page, World Chess Championship : FIDE Events 1948-1990, shows a nice, orderly progression of the two key cycles (C12 & C13), which is misleading.

Here are those same events presented in chronological order. The '}' in the last column shows events in the two cycles which were played at the same time.

	C12: 1982-1984	C13: 1985-1987
1984-09/ 1985-02	Karpov - Kasparov (I)
1985-04/-07		IZ Tunis IZ Taxco IZ Biel
1985-09/-11	Kasparov - Karpov (II)		}
1985-10/-11		CT Montpellier	}
1986-01/-02		CM QF Matches
1986-07/-10	Kasparov - Karpov (III)		}
1986-09/-10		CM Sokolov - Yusupov	}
1987-02/-03		CM Karpov - Sokolov
1987-10/-12		Kasparov - Karpov

While working on this last table I noted a few other points of interest, but ran out of time before I could investigate them further.

C26 Zonal Rating Reports

Returning to Small Projects for 2014, I added links for cycle 26 zonal events on ratings.fide.com (C26 = the current cycle) to Zonals : Links (and Other References). All of the C26 events on World Chess Championship : Zonals were present and accounted for on ratings.fide.com.

Misc. Zonal Clippings (C06)

The mention of the 1964 Benko - Bisguier match in the post for May 1964 'On the Cover' on my main blog triggered a search for more info about the zonal cycle documented in Zonals 1963-1966 (C06). While I was looking for info about the U.S. zonal, I discovered details about other zonals from the same cycle and added all of the new clippings to the C06 page.