Kasparov vs Karpov, 1984

[Cyrus]

This started in SMP (link) but the proper forum for a debate is probably here. As chess aficionados among you probably know, there was in 1984 a controversial decision by FIDE president Campomanes to abort the match for the world championship between champion Karpov and contender Kasparov, when the score was 5-3 for Karpov.

It was a match under "Fischer rules", i.e. with only wins to count. Karpov built an early 4-0 lead but a string of draws kept his next win until the 27th game, whereby he was leading by 5-0. Kasparov won the 32nd game, and, after another sting of wins which took the match to five months, won the 47th and the 48th games. (Not "three wins in a row" as many people mistakenly assert.)

At that time, citing as reasons the "physical condition" of the contestants, Campomanes, the Philippine president of FIDE, aborted the match.

I submit that the FIDE decision was more beneficial to Kasparov than to Karpov.

1. People focus on the "Kasparov comeback" but neglect the fact that the match was not interrupted (to continue at some later date, after the contestants had ostensibly "recovered") but aborted completely! The contenders would have to start anew from 0-0, which was surely an injustice to the player leading by 5-3 at the time of interruption. Kasparov himself stated (Child of Change, p. 133), "In a way this wasn't so bad for me. I was sure I would win the second match. I had become much wiser that at the beginning of this one. And to start playing again at 0-0 was better than 5-3 against."

2. Karpov needed only 1 more win, to Kasparov's 3 to win the match. Even if Karpov was indeed physically deteriorating, he was till a 3:1 favourite in the arithmetic. Kasparov himself estimated his chances of winning the match, were it not aborted, at "about 25 or 30%" (p. 141, ibid.)

3. Karpov was most probably NOT "deteriorating physically" as subsequently claimed by his various critics and adversaries (such as Kasparov or the odious Raymond Keene). What better evidence about Karpov's state of physical and mental health during the latter stages of the match than ..Kasparov himself ?

[ QUOTE ]
[From pp. 124-125 and p. 143 of Child of Change :]
Some people ... have claimed that the quality of the chess at the end was very poor, showing that the champion must have been very sick and that my victories were a fluke. This is not borne out by close analysis. GMs have picked out the following games for outstanding technical expertise, brilliant ideas or sheer sporting excitement: Numbers 6, 9, 27, 32, 36, and crucially 48 -- the very last one.

The people around Karpov couldn't understand what was happening. Because he had beaten me so easily in the early games, they assumed he must be unwell to be losing at the end. But Karpov himself knew better. ... He knew it was my chess that was beating him.

[/ QUOTE ]4. Was Kasparov in good physical and mental shape at the end of the match ? Possibly not.

[ QUOTE ]
[From a Kasparov interview to New In Chess, 1985, with Gary referring to himself in the third person :]
Exhaustion did exist anyway ... Psychological exhaustion increased even when a game was not so intense, because the match lasted a long time, and the responsibility was great. One could not relax and had to think about the match all the time. One's brain was working, and the nervous tension did not stop, not even for a moment.

[/ QUOTE ]Well, that's the evidence, or at least most of it. (Gratefully lifted from Edward Winter's exemplary Kings, Commoners and Knaves.) Kasparov eventually became world champion and proved to be among the greatest and possibly the greatest champion of all*. But at the time, in his match against Karpov, he was not the favourite to win it.

--Cyrus

* Kasparov is notorious for contradicting himself about chess personalities. But here is his opinion on Robert Fischer in 1990:

[ QUOTE ]
[From p.275 of Mortal Games] :
Bobby [Fischer] says that he is not sure he could have beaten Capablanca. Ridiculous. He would have won easily ... To compare players from different eras makes no sense ... The only way to judge the old players is relative to the other players of their period. Fischer was far ahead of the other players of his day. By this measure, I consider him the greatest world champion.

[/ QUOTE ]

[MicroBob]

I haven't studied this controversy enough.

I had always previously assumed based on my extremely limited knowledge that the Campomanes decision was done due to his preference for Karpov.

Interesting tht Kasparov still considered himself to be that significant an underdog in spite of having all momentum.

In Campomanes was so concerned about the health and well-being of the combatants could he not have just delayed the match a month or two?


I've read up a bit more on the famous Fischer/Spassky '73 match but this one in '84 is really worth learning more about as it strikes me as being almost as interesting and dramatic.


What on earth was this topic doing in SMP in the first place?

[Dale]

I won't be able to find a source for this, but I think Lev Alburt said that Botvinnik told Kasparov to make 20 draws in a row, and that would enable him to outlast Karpov. The reason? The champ was using amphetamines.

At the time, Kasparov was quite angry, because the match had been stopped at the first moment, after months and months, when he had a reasonable chance to win.

[atrifix]

[ QUOTE ]
What on earth was this topic doing in SMP in the first place?

[/ QUOTE ]

My reply started this all (from Is there luck in chess?):

[ QUOTE ]

One more thing.

A lot of people seem to think that there is luck in any one game, but when we get more and more games, the luck factor will disappear as we get into the long run. I don't think this is the case. I agree that you can have luck in any one game, and that longer matches historically tend to produce better results, but as matches get longer and longer, the effect of the match itself begins to have an impact. One could argue that this is similar to the Karpov-Kasparov 1984 match (the match was aborted because Karpov was becoming violently ill due to the extreme length of the match), although I think Kasparov was the better player in that match.

This is even more clear in tournaments. When you get a bunch of players together luck plays more of a factor.

[/ QUOTE ]

[Utah]

Hi Cyrus,

Cool post. However, your analysis doesn't seem to get to the heart of the decision. Why cancel for any other reason than the one given?

[MicroBob]

Right. If Kasparov himself was that angry when it was cancelled then this seems contrary to his statement that he only gave himself a 25-30% chance to win.

If he really thought this then why would he be angry?

And my hunch is that Karpov was indeed truly relieved that he was able to cling to his title with this weird decision because I really doubt he believed he was a 70% favorite at that point.
Wasn't he just looking terrible by the end of this thing? If he had no energy left then how on earth was he going to muster one more win against Kaspy?


I think that just going by wins was really stupid of them anyway. But not nearly as stupid as that weird NCAA single-elim bracket-stuff they've been doing.

I stopped following chess awhile ago but I believe they are still using this embarassingly poor format.

[atrifix]

[ QUOTE ]
I stopped following chess awhile ago but I believe they are still using this embarassingly poor format.

[/ QUOTE ]

In terms of world championship matches, this was the only match in history where they ever used this format (Fischer's suggestion). Today they have an much more terrible format for the world championship. I don't know about less prestigious matches, though.

[MicroBob]

by 'embarassingly poor format' I was referring to the single-elimination bracket thing they've done.

where if they are still tied after the initial longer games they go to some sudden-death deal where one of the players gets a minute less but gets draw odds or something ridiculous like that.

I mean, where do they come up ith such nonsense?

[ScottieK]

[ QUOTE ]
by 'embarassingly poor format' I was referring to the single-elimination bracket thing they've done.

where if they are still tied after the initial longer games they go to some sudden-death deal where one of the players gets a minute less but gets draw odds or something ridiculous like that.

I mean, where do they come up ith such nonsense?

[/ QUOTE ]

IIRC, the FIDE knockouts had a format where the players played a two-game match, one as each color. If they were tied, they played another two-game match at a shorter time control (like game in 30 minutes.) If they were tied after that, it was two games of 15 minutes, then two games of 5 minutes....may be off on the actual time controls, but that sounds about right. If they were still tied, one side got 6 minutes as white and the other side got 5 minutes as black and draw odds (winning in the event of a draw.) Whoever won the coin flip almost always chose to play black.

It's just like a tennis tournament (or the NCAA basketball brackets) but with the large draw factor in chess, they had to come up with something. Can't use tiebreaks in a head to head match, so they came up with this.

Found this interesting: FIDE knockout article

As for Kasparov - Karpov, it was unfair to both sides to annul the match. Both sides had legitimate grievances. It's a good thing Fischer rules are no longer used in such matches because a Super-GM contending for the world title can usually turn on that draw-machine whenever it's needed.

ScottieK

[Cyrus]

[ QUOTE ]
If Kasparov himself was that angry when it was cancelled then this seems contrary to his statement that he only gave himself a 25-30% chance to win. If he really thought this then why would he be angry?

[/ QUOTE ]He was not angry. Far from it.

The contradictory positions adopted by Kasparov throughout the years are only due to chess politics and personality clashes. Nothing more.

Initially, Kasparov acknowledged, honestly enough, that the annulment benefited him rather than Karpov. He soon changed his tune, at the advice of his smelly entourage of chess crooks and hangers-on. Later on, he understood that by belittling his great opponent and the battles he waged with Karpov, he was also belittling himself - so he reverted to a position closer to the historical truth, as evidenced by his latest book My Great Predecessors.

Here is Kasparov describing the scenes in Moscow immediately after the announcement to annul the 1984 match :

[From Child Of Change, p. 135 :]
"There was a great deal of shuffling and noise in the audience at this news. The video tape shows my trainers and myself talking and laughing among ourselves."

So, the obvious question, as explicitly posed by Mr Winter, is : Why were Kasparov and his trainers laughing ?



[ QUOTE ]
Karpov was indeed truly relieved that he was able to cling to his title. ... I really doubt he believed he was a 70% favorite at that point. Wasn't he just looking terrible by the end of this thing? How on earth was he going to muster one more win against Kaspy?

[/ QUOTE ]I dealt with the whole extraordinary speculation and hyperbole about Karpov's "total collapse" elsewhere.

I will refer you, to be brief, to Kasparov's own opinion abt Karpov's state of mental and physical health. I already provided text and source.