Karpov the 12th

I'm bouncing between two blogs here. A month ago on this blog I posted, Smartchess Interviews Karpov (November 2022). There I noted,

The period in which Smartchess was active [late 1990s to mid-2000s] was a controversial time for the World Championship and its association with Karpov might provide valuable background material. I'll try to look at its Wayback records another time.

That led to a follow-up on my main blog, Wayback to Smartchess (November 2022):-

In his interview with Smartchess, Karpov mentioned a couple of video series he was developing for Smartchess's 'WWW Chess Superstore'. I've featured two of these in posts on my main blog [see links; ...] How many more of these videos are still available on Youtube?

The answer to that last question is 'More than I expected', all on Youtube channel iChess.net. Here's one.

Karpov on Kasparov - 1984 World Chess Championship (18:17) • '[Published on] Jun 30, 2012'

The description said,

Who better to analyse Garry Kasparov's World Championship games than his opponent and eternal rival, Anatoly Karpov? Get instant access to Karpov's astounding analysis of his matches against Kasparov. [...]

Right-click the embedded video to find the original page and see the rest of the description. It points to a page titled Karpov on Kasparov - His World Chess Championships (1984-1990) (ichess.net). The description there said,

Overview: Karpov On Kasparov – His World Chess Championships (1984-1990) • 3-disc set converted, reauthored, and remastered by OnlineChessLessons.net. Total Run-time: 275 minutes. • Volume I - 1984/1985 [KK-1]; Volume II - 1987; Volume III - 1990

So the 1985 and 1986 matches [KK-2 & -3] are missing? I imagine the memories for Karpov were too painful after he surrendered his World Champion title in both.

There are more video series by Karpov available from Youtube and iChess.net. It's also worth noting a post from last year, Carlsen's TMER 2019-21, Chess24 (November 2021), where I wrote,

Current information about [the company 'Play Magnus'] is available from its web site. The following image from the site's main page lists eight subsidiaries: [...] and iChess.net.

Will I find the occasion to overview the other Karpov videos? Maybe, but I might have to bounce back to my main blog to do that.

C14 1987 Interzonal Qualifiers

I ended last week's post, C01-C29 IZ/KO/QP Cosmetic Changes (December 2020), saying, 'More to follow...'. One of the pages that I updated during the previous weeks, (C14) 1987-1990 Zonal Cycle Qualifiers, starts,

The qualification rules for this cycle have been guessed for this page.

After that page was created, we had a new web-based resource in US Chess CL Archive (November 2019). I reviewed the Chess Life (CL) PDF for the year 1987, hoping to find more information about the zonals for that year. Although I didn't eliminate all of my guesses, I did find new material for the page (C14) 1987-1990 Zonal Cycle, specifically:-

• Zone 6, the U.S Championship, where the number of players qualifying was changed after the tournament ended, and
• IZ Qualifiers, confirming the three organizer choices.

The page for the '(C14) Qualifiers' changed from (note the obviously incorrect double entry for '2I'):-

Adorjan A (c?,, 2I)
Hulak K (c?,, 3I)
Velimirovic D (c?,, 2I)

to:-

Adorjan A (c,, 2I)
Hulak K (c,, 3I)
Marjanovic S (c,, 1I)
Velimirovic D (?,, 2I)

Did GM Velimirovic qualify by rating? I'll look into that as soon as I can.

Zonal Qualifiers C13-C16

In the previous post, Zonal Qualifiers C01-C16, I started working with a summary of the qualifying paths from the zonal stage to the interzonal stage for the earliest World Championship cycles. On top of zonals, these paths included other means of seeding players into the Interzonals, like rating. To facilitate comparison, I created a table which is also shown near the end of today's post.

The table shows my count of the number of players who participated in the interzonals for C01 through C16. [...] The last column shows the number of players documented in the zonal material that I'm using as the base for this exercise. The table gives me a guide for further work on this particular project. [...] The new data lets me complete C01-C12 and also lets me doublecheck C13-C16.

The cycles C13-C16 took place during FIDE's darkest days. Let's have a recap of the interzonals that spanned nearly a decade.

C13 unfolded during the uncertainty of the first three Kasparov - Karpov (K-K) matches, when the continuity of the previous cycle (C12) had been disrupted and had entered uncharted territory. For C13, FIDE scrambled to organize something resembling a traditional cycle. There were three Interzonals that eventually led the way to the fourth K-K match.

• 1985 Biel Interzonal
• 1985 Taxco Interzonal
• 1985 Tunis Interzonal

C14 was played in (more-or-less) traditional circumstances. It was the last cycle to have three Interzonals. They culminated in the fifth K-K match, the last match between the two 'K's.

• 1987 Subotica Interzonal
• 1987 Szirak Interzonal
• 1987 Zagreb Interzonal

C15 saw the introduction of a single interzonal tournament using a Swiss system format instead of the traditional round-robin format. The cycle would eventually lead to the schism between FIDE and Kasparov, with two parallel World Championship matches.

• 1990 Manila Interzonal (64 players)

C16 was played as the schism was deepening, with two parallel World Championship cycles. No one knew where world class chess was going.

• 1993 Biel FIDE Interzonal (74 players)

The following chart is taken from the previous post, 'Zonal Qualifiers C01-C16', and highlights the four cycles featured in today's post. The counts show the approximate number of players who qualified into the interzonals for those cycles.

I compared the lists of players from my record of interzonals and the summary of zonal qualifying paths (ZQP). After identifying differences in the spelling of players' last names (needs more work to establish the accepted spelling) and accounting for the order of Asian names (like 'Qi Jinguan' and 'Jinguan Qi' in C13) I worked out the reason for the different numbers.

In C13 and C14, a total of four players were missing from the ZQP lists. C15 matched perfectly. C16 was due to a mismatch between my page on 1993 Biel and my Index of Players (they should also match); the ZQP data was perfect.

All things considered, I was pleased with the correlation between my data and the ZQP data. It was even better than I had hoped for and confirmed my belief that the ZQP data is an excellent source of info on the early FIDE zonals and interzonals.

Zt: 1987 Jakarta

In a recent post, Zonal Qualifiers C14, I was reminded of an outstanding zonal mystery, the 1987 Jakarta event for FIDE zone 11. Although the word 'scandal' is attached to the zonal, I had never seen any detailed explanation of what happened there. In particular, did the scandal have an impact on who qualified to the subsequent Interzonals?

Thanks to IndonesiaBase, there is an entire page describing the event, FIDE Zonal 11, Bogor/Jakarta 1987, including copies of letters from the players complaining about alleged collusion among the Chinese players. The page informs,

The combination of the unethical play, the fact that China had four out of twelve finalists, and the carry-through system damaged the tournament so badly to the extent of beyond repairable. GM Ian Rogers was the first player to pull out as a protest. GM Utut Adianto and GM Rosendo Balinas Jr were the next ones to do so.

Prof Dr Max Arie Wotulo, the President of FIDE Zonal 11 and an IM himself, agreed. He declared that the final stage was void. The twelve finalists were expected to be at Jakarta in May to replay the final stage. However, for a mysterious reason, the FIDE governing body ruled out this decision and endorsed the top two of the event, Chinese Xu Jun and Filipino GM Eugenio Torre, as the Zonal 11 representatives to Interzonal Championship. Case closed.

I added clippings for the IndonesiaBase crosstables and explanations to my page on (C14) 1987-1990 Zonal Cycle. Add this event to the list of bizarre zonals: 1960 Berg en Dal (as in Cold War Chess Politics) and 1975 Barcelona / 1976 Arandjelovac.

Zonal Qualifiers C14 - Qualification Paths

Continuing with the blog post on Zonal Qualifiers C14, I worked out plausible explanations for all of the 55 players known to have qualified for (or played in) one of the three Interzonals for that cycle and added the guesses to my page on C14: Zonal Qualifiers (1987-1990).

Following the same structure I used for Zonal Qualifiers C13 - Qualification Paths, the two tables below show the counts of players who qualified by the different paths.

The left table ('Qual') counts the types of qualifiers as defined in the first part of C14: Zonal Qualifiers. The right table ('Zonal') counts the players who qualified at a certain zonal ('z'), as listed in the second part of the same page. The question marks ('?') in the 'Qual' table are a reminder that there is some guesswork in the data.

For details on the different zonals, see the clippings for (C14) 1987-1990 Zonal Cycle.

Zonal Qualifiers C14

Continuing with Regulations for Qualifiers C14, I concentrated on the players who qualified from the various zonals. First I added many new clippings to the page C14: Zonals 1987-1990. The most important of those is shown below, reduced in size to fit on this blog post.

Zoninis šachmatu turnyras

It is a portion of a 'Vikipedija' [Lithuanian] page which seems to be based largely on my own work. A few comments:-

• Zone 05: Four players from this zonal competed in Interzonals. The page says Hulak and Marjanovic qualified on rating, but their ratings were too low. (NB: Pucarevo = Novi Travnikas)
• Zone 07: Neither Ivanov nor Spraggett played in a C14 Interzonal. Allan and Baragar played instead.
• Zone 11: The 'scandal' is not mentioned. Did it have any real impact?
• Zone 12: Bouaziz qualified.
• Zone 13: Hamed qualified.

Thanks to that info plus details from other new clippings, I can make an educated guess on how the players qualified, whether from zonals or otherwise.

Regulations for Qualifiers C14

Having finished Regulations for Qualifiers C13 -- that's the cycle that culminated in the 1987 Kasparov - Karpov Title Match (aka KK IV) -- I tackled the following cycle. This cycle was more complicated than any of the other cycles because I wasn't able to locate a copy of the FIDE regulations in force for the cycle.

Starting with a list of the players in the three Interzonals plus the lists on the image to the left (Source: Europe Echecs 1987-07 p.24; it mentions the date on which it was created, 16 June 1987), I worked out which players had qualified from zonals. This is largely documented in C14: 1987-1990 Zonal Cycle, although that page is not as complete as I would have liked.

There are some mismatches between the players who qualified and those who finally played. This gives me some direction for further research.

I also added a new page for C14: 1987-1990 Zonal Cycle Qualifiers. The page is only a stub for now, but I should be able to fill it out the next time I return to this subject.

World Championship Chess on Christmas

Even though I've been respecting WCC Wednesday since 2007 (the post Global Chess BV, May 2007, started the habit), this is the first time it falls on Christmas Day. What to write about? My first idea was to identify World Championship games that took place on 25 December. I thought of three events that fell over Christmas.

• 1990 Kasparov - Karpov Title Match; New York/Lyon, X-XII, 1990 • The 21st game of the 24 game match was played on 19 December, with an adjournment the next day. The draw brought the score to +4-2=15 (11.5-9.5) in Kasparov's favor, meaning he needed only a draw to retain the title. The 22nd game was scheduled for Saturday, 22 December, but Karpov took a timeout. Although there had been pressure from the Lyon organizers to avoid timeouts on the Saturday games (the games were scheduled for Monday / Wednesday / Saturday each week), rumor was that Karpov took a swipe at them for lodging he considered unsatisfactory.
  
  FIDE President Campomanes granted a technical timeout for Monday, 24 December, and the game was played on the 26th. Kasparov got his draw, but the match continued to settle the prize money. This was to be the last World Championship match played using the system of FIDE cycles invented after the death of Alekhine. Before the following title match, foreseen for 1993, the cycle collapsed just after the Candidate matches.
  
  
• 1997 FIDE Knockout Matches; Groningen, XII, 1997 • This was the first World Championship using the system of knockout matches imposed by FIDE President Ilyumzhinov. FIDE Champion Karpov was seeded directly into the final match, making the Groningen event more like a Candidates tournament. The 'quarter-final' (second-to-last round) of Groningen was scheduled to have the standard, long games played on 23-24 December, with the tiebreak on the 25th. Anand beat Gelfand in the standard games, while Adams and Short tied with a win each. In the fifth and last game of their tiebreak, a 5-minutes-to-4 blitz game (now called an Armageddon game), Adams, playing Black, beat Short. Anand beat Adams in the 'semi-final' (last round), which also reached the Armageddon stage, and earned the right to play Karpov three days later in Lausanne.
  
  
• 2000 FIDE Knockout Matches; New Delhi/Tehran, XI-XII, 2000 • The final round was scheduled for standard games on 20-26 December (with a rest day on the 23rd) and a tiebreak on the 27th. Anand drew with Shirov in the first game, but won the next three games to win the title of FIDE Champion. It was his first World Championship title.

If my dates are correct, the only games played on the 25th were the Adams - Short tiebreak series in 1997. Anand won the title on 24 December in 2000. In case I've overlooked any events, I'll add them below. In the meantime, a Merry Christmas to one and all!

World Championship Chess on TV

I'm old enough to remember the 1972 Fischer - Spassky match, when I saw chess on television for the first time. I don't remember how many times I caught the Shelby Lyman PBS show, but I vividly remember watching Spassky - Fischer, game 19, an Alekhine's Defense where Spassky sacrificed a Knight for a Kingside attack, which Fischer countered by miraculously forcing the exchange of Queens. I had already been playing for a few years, was rated around 1800 at the time, and the moves of both players seemed supernatural.

Eighteen years passed before I next saw World Championship chess on TV. It was during the second half of the 1990 Kasparov - Karpov match, played in Lyon, France. According to my page on the event, 'The match was televised by the main French station TF1, which broadcast 14 programs of 45 minutes.' Although I didn't note where I got that information, I never invent details like that so it must be right. The shows must have been aired late in the evening or I would have had competition for the remote control and would most likely not have seen any of them.

A few years later, I caught several TV broadcasts of the 1993 Kasparov - Short match. It must have been on BBC1 or BBC2, because we didn't receive any other BBC stations at the time. The recaps were up to BBC's usual high standards, but I wasn't able to find out ahead of time when the shows would be aired and missed most of them.

These memories all came back while I watched the first four games of the 2012 Anand - Gelfand match, broadcast live on the web from Moscow. For various reasons, live chess doesn't suit network television. While there are also some annoying aspects of the Moscow broadcasts, they are far outweighed by the sheer pleasure of seeing the most important chess event of the year in real time. Kudos to everyone responsible for the web production.

Kasparov on Modern Chess

The gremlins working at my website server host decided this would be a good time to take FTP out of service, so I'm temporarily blocked from making any updates to my site. Instead of continuing with my zonal page (last seen in Zonal Cycle 2004-2005), I have to punt. Looking at the ongoing list of possible topics (a long list), I see several reviews of Kasparov's series on Modern Chess, but no one source appears to have covered them all. While I'm not a big fan of Amazon customer reviews, they'll have to do.

Garry Kasparov on Modern Chess (Amazon.com):

• Part 1: Revolution in the 70's (March 2007) #150,712 in Books
  
• Part 2: Kasparov vs Karpov 1975-1985 (September 2008) #184,670
  
• Part 3: Kasparov v Karpov 1986-1987 (August 2009) #73,660
  
• Part 4: Kasparov v Karpov 1988-2009 (October 2010) #35,780

I started this topic in a previous post, Kasparov vs. Karpov 1975-1985, where I included the 'Sales Rank'. Although it's now called the 'Amazon Bestsellers Rank', I guess it's the same thing and have included the numbers for comparison. Revolution in the 70's has gone from #264,777 to #150,712. Way to go, Garry!

K-K VI VII VIII IX?

Chessninja.com reported it in July: Kasparov, Obama, Karpov; Chessbase.com picked up on it in August: Karpov - Kasparov: Grudge Match in Valencia; now that we're in September, the next match between the two greatest rivals in chess history starts in a few days.

I was planning to put together a summary of K-K's openings from the five World Championship matches, but then discovered that I'd already done one (in 1999!): The Great Rivalries, Kasparov - Karpov. As for their overall record: Chessgames.com informs that in the 190 games they have played together (CG.com's number, not confirmed), Garry Kasparov beat Anatoli Karpov 31 to 23, with 136 draws. • But wait, there's more to come: Kasparov Karpov Paris 2009!