Fischer vs Karpov – the secret game

by ChessBase
3/27/2005 – In 1976 Anatoly Karpov met with Bobby Fischer in the Philippines, hoping to arrange an unofficial world championship match. It didn't happen, but the two grandmasters did play some informal games. One was revealed to our Playchess.com lecturer Dennis Monokroussos in 1987. He kept it under lock and key for 18 years. On Monday the secret will be revealed.

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Dennis Monokroussos writes:

In 1987, when I was living in Las Vegas, Filipino GM Eugenio Torre came to town to visit some friends and give a simul. When the time came, Torre and friends came to the site in a van, a van I must have walked past several times. Guess who was in it? As I was to discover – several days later, unfortunately – a certain famous chess player now living in Iceland was hiding inside.

My local Filipino friends felt bad that they couldn't tell me that Fischer had been staying at their place, so to make up for it they shared another bombshell, albeit one which I was not to tell anyone else. I agreed, but it seems to me that 18 years is long enough.

Thus, for my ChessBase show for the week of March 28 – April 3, I will present a hitherto secret game played between Fischer and Anatoly Karpov. In 1976, a year after receiving the title by default, Karpov met with Fischer in the Philippines (see Russians vs. Fischer, compiled by Dmitry Plisetsky and Sergey Voronkov, Chess World Ltd. 1994 (366-367), hoping to arrange an unofficial world championship match. Fischer was interested, but the USSR Sports Committee would have none of it and the proposal came to nought.

In the wake of the failed negotiations, however, Fischer and Karpov played a number of informal games before returning to their respective countries, and my Filipino friends were kind enough to let me see one of them. And so 18 years after my discovery, and 29 years after the game itself, that game will become available to a wider audience – at least as long as ChessBase allows me to present it!

Dennis Monokroussos' Radio ChessBase lectures begin on Mondays at 9 p.m. EDT, which translates to 02:00h GMT, 03:00 Paris/Berlin, 13:00h Sydney (on Tuesday). Other time zones can be found at the bottom of this page. You can use Fritz or any Fritz-compatible program (Shredder, Junior, Tiger, Hiarcs) to follow the lectures, or download a free trial client.


Dennis Monokroussos is 38, lives in South Bend, IN (the site of the University of Notre Dame), and is writing a Ph.D. dissertation in philosophy (in the philosophy of mind) while adjuncting at the University.

He is fairly inactive as a player right now, spending most of his non-philosophy time being a husband and teaching chess. At one time he was one of the strongest juniors in the U.S., but quit for about eight years starting in his early 20s. His highest rating was 2434 USCF, but he has now fallen to the low-mid 2300s – "too much blitz, too little tournament chess", he says.

Dennis has been working as a chess teacher for seven years now, giving lessons to adults and kids both in person and on the internet, worked for a number of years for New York’s Chess In The Schools program, where he was one of the coaches of the 1997-8 US K-8 championship team from the Bronx, and was very active in working with many of CITS’s most talented juniors.

When Dennis Monokroussos presents a game, there are usually two main areas of focus: the opening-to-middlegame transition and the key moments of the middlegame (or endgame, when applicable). With respect to the latter, he attempts to present some serious analysis culled from his best sources (both text and database), which he has checked with his own efforts and then double-checked with his chess software.

Here are the exact times for different locations in the world

Abu Dhabi Tue 06:00   Halifax Mon 22:00   New Orleans Mon 20:00
Addis Ababa Tue 05:00 Hanoi Tue 09:00 New York Mon 21:00
Adelaide Tue 11:30 Harare Tue 04:00 Odesa * Tue 05:00
Aden Tue 05:00 Havana * Mon 22:00 Oslo * Tue 04:00
Aklavik Mon 19:00 Helsinki * Tue 05:00 Ottawa Mon 21:00
Algiers Tue 03:00 Hong Kong Tue 10:00 Paris * Tue 04:00
Amman Tue 04:00 Honolulu Mon 16:00 Perth Tue 10:00
Amsterdam * Tue 04:00 Houston Mon 20:00 Philadelphia Mon 21:00
Anadyr * Tue 15:00 Indianapolis Mon 21:00 Phoenix Mon 19:00
Anchorage Mon 17:00 Islamabad Tue 07:00 Prague * Tue 04:00
Ankara * Tue 05:00 Istanbul * Tue 05:00 Reykjavik Tue 02:00
Antananarivo Tue 05:00 Jakarta Tue 09:00 Rio de Janeiro Mon 23:00
Asuncion Mon 22:00 Jerusalem Tue 04:00 Riyadh Tue 05:00
Athens * Tue 05:00 Johannesburg Tue 04:00 Rome * Tue 04:00
Atlanta Mon 21:00 Kabul Tue 06:30 San Francisco Mon 18:00
Baghdad Tue 05:00 Kamchatka * Tue 15:00 San Juan Mon 22:00
Bangkok Tue 09:00 Karachi Tue 07:00 San Salvador Mon 20:00
Barcelona * Tue 04:00 Kathmandu Tue 07:45 Santiago Mon 22:00
Beijing Tue 10:00 Khartoum Tue 05:00 Santo Domingo Mon 22:00
Beirut * Tue 05:00 Kingston Mon 21:00 Sao Paulo Mon 23:00
Belgrade * Tue 04:00 Kiritimati Tue 16:00 Seattle Mon 18:00
Berlin * Tue 04:00 Kolkata Tue 07:30 Seoul Tue 11:00
Bogota Mon 21:00 Kuala Lumpur Tue 10:00 Shanghai Tue 10:00
Boston Mon 21:00 Kuwait City Tue 05:00 Singapore Tue 10:00
Brasilia Mon 23:00 Kyiv * Tue 05:00 Sofia * Tue 05:00
Brisbane Tue 12:00 La Paz Mon 22:00 St. John's Mon 22:30
Brussels * Tue 04:00 Lagos Tue 03:00 St. Paul Mon 20:00
Bucharest * Tue 05:00 Lahore Tue 07:00 Stockholm * Tue 04:00
Budapest * Tue 04:00 Lima Mon 21:00 Suva Tue 14:00
Buenos Aires Mon 23:00 Lisbon * Tue 03:00 Sydney Tue 12:00
Cairo Tue 04:00 London * Tue 03:00 Taipei Tue 10:00
Canberra Tue 12:00 Los Angeles Mon 18:00 Tallinn * Tue 05:00
Cape Town Tue 04:00 Madrid * Tue 04:00 Tashkent Tue 07:00
Caracas Mon 22:00 Managua Mon 20:00 Tegucigalpa Mon 20:00
Casablanca Tue 02:00 Manila Tue 10:00 Tehran * Tue 06:30
Chatham Island Tue 14:45 Melbourne Tue 12:00 Tokyo Tue 11:00
Chicago Mon 20:00 Mexico City Mon 20:00 Toronto Mon 21:00
Copenhagen * Tue 04:00 Minneapolis Mon 20:00 Vancouver Mon 18:00
Darwin Tue 11:30 Minsk * Tue 05:00 Vienna * Tue 04:00
Denver Mon 19:00 Montevideo Mon 23:00 Vladivostok * Tue 13:00
Detroit Mon 21:00 Montgomery Mon 20:00 Warsaw * Tue 04:00
Dhaka Tue 08:00 Montreal Mon 21:00 Washington DC Mon 21:00
Dublin * Tue 03:00 Moscow * Tue 06:00 Wellington Tue 14:00
Edmonton Mon 19:00 Mumbai Tue 07:30 Winnipeg Mon 20:00
Frankfurt * Tue 04:00 Nairobi Tue 05:00 Yangon Tue 08:30
Geneva * Tue 04:00 Nassau Mon 21:00 Zagreb * Tue 04:00
Guatemala Mon 20:00 New Delhi Tue 07:30 Zürich * Tue 04:00

* indicates that the place is currently observing daylight saving time (DST)


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