Why did Petrosian stop playing the Petroff

by John Saunders
12/6/2021 – At the halfway mark in the 1969 World Championship between Petrosian and Spassky, the match score was level. Petrosian only needed to draw the match to retain his title, and with his super-solid Petroff it looked like he was going to wrap things up. But in game 17 and 19 Petrosian suddenly switched to Sicilian, losing calamitously. John Saunders retraces the course of the match that decided who would defend the title against Fischer three years later.

Winning starts with what you know
The new version 18 offers completely new possibilities for chess training and analysis: playing style analysis, search for strategic themes, access to 6 billion Lichess games, player preparation by matching Lichess games, download Chess.com games with built-in API, built-in cloud engine and much more.

December 2021 There’s only one topic to write about this month, isn’t there? The world championship match.  I am, of course, referring to the Petrosian-Spassky match of 1969. Come on, readers, you didn’t think I was going to write about Carlsen vs Unmemorable, did you? I should  explain that ‘Unmemorable’ is how Facebook auto-translates ‘Nepomniachtchi’ (Непомнящий – learn to pronounce it!) from Russian into English. They’ll have to fix that if the brilliant Russian claims Magnus’s crown. 

I’ve no doubt that our Executive Editor will have a lot to say about the current clash of the titans, so to avoid duplication it’s safer for me to yield to my overpowering urge to look back and relive a few moments from the first world championship match which I followed in some detail.

I  wasn’t  a  competition  player  when Petrosian defended his title against Spassky for the first time in 1966, so the 1969 world title match between the same players was new and exciting to me. Title matches were a veritable marathon in those days – 24 games, played at the then standard classical rate of 40 moves in two and a half hours, with adjournments after five  hours.  I  followed  progress  via  Leonard Barden’s next-day reports in The Guardian. 

Often  the  game  would  be  adjourned  so that  you  would  be  kept  in  suspense  for  a further  day,  rather  like  a  two-part  TV mystery  drama,  but  this  could  be  fun  as  it meant you had a day to debate the adjourned position  with  fellow  chess  addicts. Sometimes there would be a disappointment: you would open the newspaper expecting to find a new game to enjoy, only to read that it had been postponed for a couple of days due to a player’s indisposition. The rule allowing players  to  take  a  time  out  was  originally intended to cover genuine illness, but by this time it was routinely used to take a day or two off, often for tactical reasons. 

Tigran Petrosian famously defeated Boris Spassky on the black side of the Torre Attack in their 1966 match, but three years later it was all about his defending the Petroff – or not.

One question sticks in my mind about the 1969 match. Why did Petrosian stop playing the Petroff? A bit of background first: Petrosian won the first game of the match, but Spassky then hit back with three wins in Games 4, 5 and 8. However, Petrosian rallied to win Games 10 and 11. At the halfway mark the match score was level. Bear in mind that Petrosian only needed to draw the match to retain his title.

For Game 13 Spassky switched back from 1 d4/1 c4 to 1 e4, which he had played in Games 1 and 3, but with scant success. The game continued 1...e5 2 Nf3 Nf6, the Petroff Defence. Iron Tigran playing the Petroff sounds like the very definition of a tough defence, and indeed it was as he navigated to a comfortable 25-move draw. Spassky tried 1 e4 again in Game 15: Petrosian played the Petroff again and obtained an even easier draw in 19 moves.

They were still all-square when they sat down to play Game 17. It followed a two-day postponement requested by Spassky, suggesting he needed some time to come up with a way of breaking down Petrosian’s defence. Once again it was 1 e4. At this point Petrosian surprised the world by not playing 1...e5. Instead he played 1...c5 and eventually lost. Game 19 was another Sicilian and this time Petrosian lost calamitously. He managed to win Game 20, but he never got back on terms with Spassky who duly won the match.

I still don’t understand why Petrosian switched away from the Petroff when Spassky had yet to find a viable answer to it. Compare and contrast Kasparov-Kramnik in 2000, when the challenger’s stubborn espousal of the Berlin Defence was the decisive factor in wresting the title (though it’s true he switched to a different line of the Ruy Lopez in one game).

Looking back at the 1969 match reveals a few other surprises. When Petrosian defended with the Petroff in Game 13, he became the very first player to do so in a world title match. Given the Petroff’s long history and solid reputation, that might raise a few eyebrows now, but Petrosian’s adoption of the Petroff was described as a “sensation of the first magnitude” by Peter Clarke in BCM, with BH Wood making a similar comment in our own magazine.

I ran a search on the use of Petroff’s Defence in world championship matches and tournaments, and found there have been just 21 of them. The next Petroff after Petrosian’s initial pair in 1969 was when Korchnoi lost to Karpov with it in Game 4 of their 1981 match. Karpov and Kasparov both defended Petroffs against each other in their 1984, 1985 and 1990 matches, with the only decisive result being Karpov’s loss in the 48th game of the 1985 match. That’s two wins for White, with Kramnik being the only player to win from the black side when he beat Leko in Game 1 of their 2004 match. The remaining 18 draws underline the modern perception that the Petroff is a highly reliable drawing weapon for Black at the highest level. Most recently Caruana used it twice to thwart Carlsen in 2018.

I should also add that Petrosian’s Petroff in Game 13 was the first time he had played it himself in any game of which a record exists. He went on to play it a further seven times in his career, including in his 1971 Candidates match with Fischer, plus against some other top-level GMs. He drew all nine of his Petroff games. 

Peter Clarke tried to make sense of Petrosian’s abandonment of the Petroff in Game 17, but his argument was unconvincing. BH Wood commented: “Quite a puzzle, this. Why, at level scores, after the all-too-easy draws of the 13th and 15th games, does Petrosian suddenly abandon the Petroff?” But then he adds: “And in the Sicilian, why does he play the line that had him at a disadvantage in the first game instead of the Dragon that brought him an easy draw in the third? The answer is that he is now playing for a win with Black!” Equally unconvincing: the jury is still out. 

Had Petrosian persisted with the Petroff, it might well have been him and not Spassky who defended the title against Fischer in 1972 and chess history would have been very different.

 

You can go to our Live Database and search for "Petrosian Spassky 1969", to retrieve all the games of the match and play through them with engine evaluation.


 

The above article was reproduced from Chess Magazine December 2021, with kind permission.

CHESS Magazine was established in 1935 by B.H. Wood who ran it for over fifty years. It is published each month by the London Chess Centre and is edited by IM Richard Palliser and Matt Read. The Executive Editor is Malcolm Pein, who organises the London Chess Classic.

CHESS is mailed to subscribers in over 50 countries. You can subscribe from Europe and Asia at a specially discounted rate for first timers, or subscribe from North America.



In 1999 John Saunders gave up his job as an IT professional to become full-time editor/webmaster of 'British Chess Magazine'. During the 2000s he was also webmaster and magazine editor for the English Chess Federation, and regular webmaster and photo-reporter at Isle of Man and Gibraltar tournaments. In 2010 he became editor of the leading UK monthly 'CHESS' Magazine, retiring in 2012 but remaining its associate editor and regular contributor.

Discuss

Rules for reader comments

 
 

Not registered yet? Register

valu831 valu831 12/17/2021 10:59
The Soviets wanted a Russian at the helm, not an Armenian. In 1966, Moscow was expecting Spassky to beat Tigran naturally, because of the chauvinism that Russian quite simply is better than Armenian (or any other former soviet republic for that matter), and being shocked they put pressure on Yerevan and Tigran to not win! This kind of stuff happened throughout the Soviet history and in all aspects, not just sports.
Petrosianic Petrosianic 12/7/2021 08:24
Spassky hadn't found an answer to it, but then he hadn't tried too hard. He'd played the Qe2+ line both times, and been fairly content to draw. Had Petrosian played the Petroff again in Game 17, Spassky would surely have had some other line prepared. Maybe 3. d4, maybe 5. d4, but whatever it was, he'd probably have been better prepped for it than Petrosian. The Kan was a line Petrosian had won with earlier in the match.

LOL at Burgershirt's take that the authorities ordered to play the Sicilian just because Russians always cheat even when it makes no sense to do so.
Aighearach Aighearach 12/7/2021 05:30
If Nepo is serious about creating chaos and winning with better calculation he should just play the Bongcloud.

True, Carlsen knows it well, but he isn't likely to have been specifically preparing for it.

And it's a lot more solid than the King's Gambit.
adbennet adbennet 12/7/2021 04:37
King's Gambit!
Burgershirt Burgershirt 12/7/2021 02:52
It may have been as simple as being told by the Soviet authorities to make a change because they viewed Spassky as the stronger player at the time. There is plenty of circumstantial evidence of that sort of thing over the decades of Soviet chess dominance.
Peter B Peter B 12/7/2021 02:24
I think top-level chess in 1969 was different from 21st top-level chess in a few ways, including two ways which are relevant here: (1) the Petroff was not a common drawing weapon, and (2) wins for black were quite common. In fact, before Petrosian played the Silician Kan in Game 17, it was 2 wins to white and 4 wins to black; and Petrosian had won with the Sicilian Kan in Game 1. So I think Petrosian thought the Kan was a better option than the Petroff: it won in Game 1, so it was good for a draw and maybe a win.

Another point is that not all Sicilians are the same, and the Kan is does not generally lead to crazy double-edged positions like the Dragon or 6 Bg5 Najdorf. (I agree his choice of Najdorf in Game 19 is surprising, but by then he was behind).
Aighearach Aighearach 12/7/2021 02:17
Why did Petrosian stop playing the Petroff?

@genem: According to wikipedia: "Petrosian was partially deaf and wore a hearing aid during his matches."
A Alekhine A Alekhine 12/7/2021 02:11
I don't think "history would have been very different" if Fischer had faced Petrosian for the title in 1972. Fischer faced Petrosian in the semifinal in 1971 and crushed him 6.5-3.5.
genem genem 12/6/2021 09:17
"Petrosian only needed to draw the match to retain his title,...".
To my American ear, the correct terminology when the unit is one individual game is 'draw', but for a whole match the term should be 'tie'.

The 1966 photo shows Spassky talking to Petrosian, presumably about post-game analysis. Yet Petrosian was deaf. By staring at Spassky's mouth, could Petrosian really read lips well enough to follow Spassky saying things like "...then the knight moves to g5, then the pawn advances, and then...", all without being able to instead look at the chess board?

About the lamenting of Match World Chess Championship's suffering too many drawn games, and too many tied matches after regulation: many people express a desire to discontinue the use of Blitz to settle tied matches. Many express support for Yasser Seirawan's idea giving the defending champion tie-odds again, but to compensate also give the challenger one extra/final game as White (thus an odd number of games total). Yet the consensus is that the one extra game as White is insufficient compensation for the challenger.
So I further suggest that, as a bit of additional compensation -
- This final extra game as White should be made conditional - so that the extra game will Not be played if the challenger is leading the match at that stage.
majorbackes majorbackes 12/6/2021 08:36
Why did Petrosian stop playing the Petroff?
dundalk dundalk 12/6/2021 08:13
I have always been puzzled about why people think there is a mystery here. Put yourself in Petrosian's position. After two poor efforts against the Petroff, Spassky had just taken a timeout and returned and played 1.e4 anyway. Obviously, he had something ready. Viewed like that, it makes perfect sense not to give him the chance to show it. Remember, this was in a time when theory was much less developed and the chances of being hit with a blockbuster novelty (especially in a less popular opening) were much higher. Also, as part of his match strategy, Petrosian probably intended the Petroff as a surprise weapon and never intended to play it more than a couple of times anyway. His decision to switch to that line of the Sicilian was certainly questionable and, expressed like that, one can certainly consider it a strange decision - he probably should have gone to the Spanish. But not repeating the Petroff is the most natural thing in the world.
Offramp Offramp 12/6/2021 06:01
Is it possible that TVP had grown tired of the responsibility of being the World Champion?
1
We use cookies and comparable technologies to provide certain functions, to improve the user experience and to offer interest-oriented content. Depending on their intended use, analysis cookies and marketing cookies may be used in addition to technically required cookies. Here you can make detailed settings or revoke your consent (if necessary partially) with effect for the future. Further information can be found in our data protection declaration.