There have been many great rivalries in sport. But which is the greatest rivalry in chess history? Would it be Kasparov vs. Karpov?
Here are the records in their head to head world championship matches:
Moscow 1984-1985: Karpov – Kasparov (5W – 3L – 40D)
Moscow 1985: Kasparov – Karpov (5W – 3L – 16D)
London – Leningrad 1986: Kasparov – Karpov (5W – 4L – 15D)
Seville 1987: Kasparov – Karpov (4W – 4L – 16D)
New York – Lyon 1990: Kasparov – Karpov (4W – 3L – 17D)
Total: Kasparov won 21 – Karpov won 19 – 104 games were drawn
In their last (friendly) match in NY City, Karpov won 2.5 – 1.5.
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
That was some great battles.
Fischer – Spassky, Karpov – Kasparov, also Topalov – Kramnik :D.
Obviously Karpov is the favourite.
Kasparov vs Karpov. There was never, and likely never will be, another chess rivalry to equal it. The drama of their showdowns, which I eagerly followed game by game in Byrne’s chess columns in The New York Times, was simply astounding.
People often forget that in the first match, Karpov ran out to a quick 5-0 lead and needed only a single win to finish Kasparov off; but Kasparov would not yield. After a long series of hard-fought draws, Kasparov started winning a few games and the match was quickly declared a draw. Each subsequent match was high drama, with Kasparov needing to win game 24 during the Seville match just to retain his title. The two brought out the best chess in each other.
Yes, Karpov – Kasparov was the greatest battle ever, but don’t forget Capablanca – Alekhine, pls.
Yes some epic battles, however i must agree with Bobby’s assesment of many games being suspicious, if there were not prearranged then perhaps there were some “silent agreements” between them!? Anyway thewy were the best after the Bobman.
They played so many games together, someone might think they were gay?
Sorry to tell you that you are all dead wrong.
The greatest chess rivalry was definitely between the Soviet star Anatoly Karpov and the Soviet ‘Defector’ Victor Korchnoi in Baguio City/Phillipines in 1978.
Their rivalry had already a ‘history’ starting when Korchnoi chose then Youth World Champion Karpov as sparring partner for his Candidates match against Petrosian in 1971. Later Karpov ‘stole’ Korchnois’ long-time personal trainer Furman from him and went on to a narrow victory (3 to 2 wins) in the Candidates Final against Korchnoi in Moscow in 1974, the only Candidates Final ever that was played over 24 games! This made Karpov World Champion because of Fischers forfeiture in 1975. Then 1976 Korchnoi defected from the Soviet Union because he was supposed to give opening preparations like other Soviet GMs to Karpov in order to back up Karpov against non-soviet world-title competitors (originally against Fischer).
However, Karpov used this support by Soviet GMs in order to gain a significant advantage over all the other SOVIET (!) GMs including Korchnoi. That was the reason for Korchnoi to defect in 1976 and even at a age of 46 he steam-rolled Petrosian, Polugajewski and Spasski (though loosing 4 in a row against the latter!) for a title-match against his nemesis Karpov in 1978.
After an incredible psychological battle and dramatic games (Korchnoi missed a mate in 4 in the 5th game) Korchnoi came back after trailing 1:4 and 2:5 to eualize for a 5:5 after 31 games.
Now a sudden death situation arose when Karpov could win the 32nd game and was honored by Soviet leader Breshnev.
No other rivalry in chess history comes close to that IMO.
Alekhine – Capablanca.
Fischer Spassky is hardly a great battle, too much like one sided affair towards the end.
Fischer-Spassky was not long enough. Fischer had never beaten Spassky until Iceland.
It certainly isn’t Alekhine-Bogojulbov.
Topolov-Kramnik isn’t there, yet.
So, yes. Kasparov-Karpov is the greatest rivalry in chess. Two giants slugging it out over 140 games. Awesome.
Some more details about the Karpov-Korchnoi rivalry:
– Karpov wrote that during their training match in 1971 at the house of Korchnoi during which he also had lunch with the Korchnois’, he got to eat bad food by Korchnois wife in order to weaken him for the games.
WCh match 1978:
– Korchnoi didn’t stand up for the Soviet national anthem at the 1978 match opening ceremony
– From game 8 on Karpov refused to shake hands with Korchnoi
– Korchnoi protested against Karpov being served yoghurt during the games , because there could be a hidden message in the color of the yoghurt
– Korchnoi wore mirror glasses in order to protect himself against Karpovs para-psychologist Shukar
– Karpov rocked his chair to disturb Korchnoi
– Draw offers were offered through the arbiter and not directly between the players
– Korchnoi dragged game 5 on over 120 moves and stalemated Karpov in order to avoid a draw offer and to humiliate him
– Korchnoi brought Gurus to the playing hall in order to ‘combat’ Dr. Sukhar
– After protests the first rows of the audience had to be removed and Dr. Shukar had to sit in the back row
– both parties made accusations and held press conferences to degrade the other side
– For the last game Dr.Shukar moved to the front rows again. Korchnoi didn’t sign the score sheet and filed a protest against the 32nd game in court
What’s so great about the Fischer-Spassky rivalry? It’s all based on one match. The second match took away from it rather than adding anything.
Botvinnik vs. Smyslov and Benjamin vs. Fedorowicz
Spassky – Tal and Spassky – Petrosian in addition to those listed earlier
What do all of these have in common – they actually played over the board and didn’t just jaw at each other or write poison pen articles.
Amazingly close overall.
test
@Anon 9:40AM: Both Fischer-Spassky and Kramnik-Topalov played just one (WCh) match against each other, in the latter case at least for the time being. If anything, K&K (Karpov-Korchnoi) is comparable to K&K (Karpov-Kasparov).
Kasparov-Karpov is the greatest chess rivalry ever…if only from the sheer number of world championship match games alone!
Korchnoi – Karpov – this was personal!
Topailov – Kramnik? are you mad?
Look I love the Fischer Mythos as much as anyone else. But as far as Rivalries go in chess….well Kapnob vs Kacnapob (I even remember the cyrillic spelling) was by far the best ever. Never have two individuals stood so high above the rest and fought it out. And although Kasparov won..Karpov was certainly not so easy to beat. They were incredible matches with some incredible games. I hope one day we can see such a thing again…but looking at the scene right now…..I think we’ll need to wait a while.
I’m rambling now…so sue me.
Karpov Korchnoi was pretty compelling. Capa and Alekhine…well…Alekhine never gave him a shot after he won..so I’d say that COULD have been great..but with all due respect to Mr Alekhine..he wimped out. Kasparov vs Deep Blue…Kasparov is the one world champ…that NEVER backed down or ran from a fight..(sorry Bobby) …he stuck his chin out and was always there at the plate. The match he lost to Deep Blue was crazy…the Caro Kann he lost..playing a move anyone knows is bad..just revealed that humans make mistakes. DB didn’t win the match as much as Kasparovs “humanity” lost it. The fact that IBM would not release the analisys and would not play a rematch proved they were clearly trying to capitalize on the lucky break. Steinitz vs Tschigorin….I guess everyones forgotten about those matches….but they were sort of the Kasparov Karpov of their day. Going trough those old games…still makes me smile.
Have a great Thursday people.!
Fischer – Spassky wasn’t a rivalry, but rather a friendship!
Kasparov – Karpov also was more a great competition rather than a ‘rivalry’.
karpov visited Kasparov when he was in prison; something that would never happen between Karpov and Korchnoi…
Topalov – Kramnik is also not a big rivalry; Topalov (better: Danailov) only started the off-the-board ‘toilet’-campaign against Kramnik in 2006 AFTER HE TRAILED 0:2 after 2 games.
Kramnik and Topalov are both rather quiet and nice people, it’s simply the ‘mafioso’ Danailov who creates things like ‘toiletgate’ for a very specific purpose.
The greatest ever rivalry was definitely Karpov – Korchnoi and their Match in 1978 was pure war.
The greatest rivalry was between Paul Morphy and the the rest of the world!
He beat everyone even after giving away all of his pawns an giving queen odds!
Read about it!
Word!
Sorry to tell you that you are all dead wrong.
And I’m sorry to tell you that you don’t know the difference between a fact and an opinion.
Riddle:
What two human beings would sit at a chess board week after week and draw forty something games each lasting several hours, and not give up, pack their bags and go home?
Answer:
Two demented Russians who are products of the old school Soviet-style communism