Key Concepts of Chess - Pawn Structures Vol.1 and 2
In this two-part course the emphasis will be on typical pawn-structures.
In this episode, I continue discussing one of the best players in the world who never became world champion but came incredibly close. After the match in Baguio City in 1978, which Kortchnoi narrowly lost to Karpov, the Soviet Chess Federation boycotted all tournaments that Kortchnoi participated in. As a result, he received almost no invitations to major tournaments for several years. However, he could not be excluded from the world championship cycle.
In 1981, he again defeated Petrosian (5½-3½) and Polugaevsky (7½-6½), after which he had to face Robert Hübner in the final of the Candidate Matches. Hübner abandoned the match when trailing 4½-3½, and thus Kortchnoi once again faced Karpov for the World Chess Championship. At this second chance, in 1981 in Merano, he lost decisively: 7-11. But "giving up" was not in the dictionary of the naturalized Swiss.
In the next candidates' tournament, Kortchnoi defeated Hungarian Lajos Portisch, who had been a top-10 player for quite some time, with an impressive 6-3. He then had to play against Garry Kasparov, and FIDE assigned the match to Pasadena in the United States. The Soviet Chess Federation refused to allow Kasparov to travel there. When Kasparov did not show up, Kortchnoi was declared the winner. The Soviet Chess Federation then negotiated an agreement with Kortchnoi: if the match were played, the Soviet Union would lift the boycott. Kortchnoi agreed to play the match in London, and in addition to lifting the boycott, the Soviet Union also paid Kortchnoi a substantial sum of money. Kortchnoi won the first game but later faltered and lost the match 4-7.
In his later career, Kortchnoi was pleasantly surprised when then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was willing to restore his Soviet-Russian citizenship, recognizing his contribution to the development of chess in the Soviet Union. From 1992 onwards, he was allowed to travel to the Soviet Union again. Thus, he was able to participate in the Chess Olympiad in Moscow in 1994. He remained a passionate chess player who, even at an advanced age, continued to belong to the top 100 in the world. He earned respect when, in 2011, he managed to win a game against Fabiano Caruana in the second round of the Gibraltar Masters, who was already a world-class player at the time.
Earlier, he played an incredible game against his former rival, Anatoly Karpov, which he won in Dortmund 1994, allowing his opponent to play a middlegame with two queens! There were thus three queens on the board! In the diagram position that emerged, Karpov answered Black's last move 64...Rb3-f3! with 65.Qe1 and went down. The big question, however, was what would have happened after 65.axb7 Txf2 66.Kg1 Qf5 67.Qa1. What unimaginable move did Kortchnoi have in store for his opponent here?
Master Class Vol.15 - Viktor Korchnoi
In this video course, experts (Pelletier, Marin, Müller and Reeh) examine the games of Viktor Korchnoi. Let them show you which openings Korchnoi chose to play, where his strength in middlegames were, or how he outplayed his opponents in the endgame.
This week’s show (for Premium Members only)
