RIP Viktor Korchnoi

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36464406

Originally posted by moonbus
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36464406

Korchnoi had an even score against Fischer, winning with the Black pieces. Not many people can claim that.

Below: Fischer - Korchnoi, Candidates, 1962. Note the Q sac at the end.

Originally posted by moonbus
Korchnoi had an even score against Fischer, winning with the Black pieces. Not many people can claim that.

Below: Fischer - Korchnoi, Candidates, 1962. Note the Q sac at the end.

[pgn][Event "Curacao Candidates"]
[Site "Willemstad CURACAO"]
[Date "1962.05.09"]
[Round "5"]
[White "Robert James Fischer"]
[Black "Viktor Korchnoi"]
[Result "0-1"]
[E ...[text shortened]... 27. Bxf8 Rxf8 28. Ne7+ Kh8 29. Nxf5 Qe6 30. Rg1 a4 31. Rg4 Qb3 32. Qf1 a3 33. Rg3 Qxg3 0-1[/pgn]

He stayed sharp right up to the end and continued playing for the Swiss olympic team. His rating was around 2500 at the age of 85--not bad, not bad at all, for an old codger.

Originally posted by moonbus
He stayed sharp right up to the end and continued playing for the Swiss olympic team. His rating was around 2500 at the age of 85--not bad, not bad at all, for an old codger.

Good grief. We've lost a legend.

I guess now he doesn't need a psychic medium to play Geza Maroczy's ghost like he did in 1985.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Anyone know his peak rating?

https://s31.postimg.org/gdgwqzup7/DSCI0402.jpg

Earlier this year I purchased his autobiography (if I could predict my present state I wouldn't buy all those books), his first autobiography in the eve of Baguio match and I had read it at once like interesting short story collection of De Maupassant or Carver.
I used to like Korchnoi, I used to hate Karpov, once, when I was junior player but at the time I didn't understand neither of them.
Karpov's Caro-Kann was so boring and Korchnoi's French and Open Ruy Lopez were so difficult (*and boring as for Open Roy Lopez' matter).
At the time I was trying to copycat Fischer without the slightest understanding of positional play.
Then I realized that Karpov is greatest talent, he is Capablanca-incarnation, I figured out that Smyslov is Rubinstein-incarnation, that "my" Fischer is turbo-modernized clone of Steinitz, and my poor play can only resemble - Korchnoi. And Stein, who is light version of Korchnoi.

And it became clear to me that I am bad, bad copy, like 18th photocopy plus spilled coffee plus wrinkled. And I gave up chess when I left junior time behind me.

I liked Korchnoi, in time I even began to like some his openings, it was awful to root for him and not to be able to understand his English opening and his French Defense against Spassky in Belgrade, for example, in 1978, so I even played French OTB, and I grasped a little bit of strategy.

In this book, he spoke as virtual non/communist (*not anticommunist, but non/communist), married with chess really. It is comic when he describes a USSR ch and is writing about small flat - "...my boy was crying and was somewhat ill, I got sick too, so I was admitted in hospital and I had terrible food and had no time for game preparation..."

In some paragraphs he even lied, not much, just a little bit, but it was sympatico, obviously under influence of the new hosts in Netherlands.

But basicly it was a story of middle-aged non-communist chess freak who could adjust in his forties to new life on the West.
Devastating description of Petrosian and other Soviet players who "were servants of the regime", and boyish sincerety with disarming criticism of Soviet life filled with some bright sides of that life, too, yep.
When I play OTB chess I always think of him, me, his wrinkled 18th photocopy with coffee stains.
RIP.