The Human Comedy of Chess: A Grandmaster's Chronicles

By Hans Ree

Brilliant Chess, Brilliant Essays, Brilliant Writer Dutch Grandmaster Hans Ree is considered by many to be the best chess writer in the world today. As noted by the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, reviewing the original Dutch edition, “This is more than a book about chess politics or leaders in the chess world. It is above all a declaration of love for the game, with an elegant collection of odes to the greater and lesser personalities that evolve around the 64 squares. Ree personally knows many of the people he writes about. That leads to beautiful and striking portraits.- In almost sixty separate essays, in seven categories (World Champions, Politics, In Memoriam, History, The Endgame, Matches & Tournaments and Miscellanea), Ree touches on chess matters near and dear to the hearts of chessplayers worldwide. This book, published in 1999, still retains its relevance, insight and its edge, more than a decade after being released.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Russell Enterprises, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781936490400

Book preview

1999

Preface

The year started with an impressive victory by Garry Kasparov in the Hoogovens Tournament in the Dutch seaside resort of Wijk aan Zee. Two months later he won the Linares tournament with the magnificent score of 10½ out of 14, two-and-a-half points ahead of the successive crown princes Vladimir Kramnik and Viswanathan Anand. Then in May he won the tournament in Sarajevo, seemingly without having to exert himself. In top chess today, crown princes come and go, but when push comes to shove, Kasparov keeps on showing, time and again, that he is the king of chess.

Another thing these recent tournaments show is that today’s top chess is wild and aggressive. In the 1920s it was feared that the game of chess would die an untimely death, because the technical perfection of the top players was such that they could no longer lose against each other. Since then the technique has improved even more, but the result has not been the reign of the solid draw, but something rather like the headhunting frenzy of axe-wielding savages.

Robert Fischer, who lives in exile in Budapest, makes fun of the coke-bottle glasses the top players have to wear after ruining their eyesight by staring endlessly at computer screens. Fischer thinks the end of chess is near, because studying seems to have become more important than playing; he has in fact invented a new, personal version of chess, FischeRandom, with its own rules. However, he is finding few followers, because most observers agree that today’s top chess has more vitality than ever.

The same cannot be said of the international chess organization. In chess politics we are witnessing a veritable parade of scoundrels. Great events, such as the Fischer-Spassky match of 1992 and the 1994 Moscow Olympiad, were financed by shady businessmen whose wealth came from the kind of pyramid schemes that have led to popular uprisings in several countries.

And then, in 1995, the world chess federation got a new leader. FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who is also president of Kalmykia, an autonomous republic within the Russian Federation, has been issuing one bizarre decree after another. He is rich, handsome and charming. He is also a ruthless despot who makes short shrift of rules, agreements and the process of law. At this writing, the dates for the FIDE world championship, where Anatoly Karpov has to defend his title, have been changed four times. As to the other world championship, that of Kasparov, a match between him and Anand was announced for next October, after Alexei Shirov, who had gained the right to challenge Kasparov, was ruthlessly dumped. Recent chess politics have been interesting indeed, as in the well-known Chinese curse: May your children live in interesting times.

While this book devotes considerable attention to the history of chess, it focuses more particularly on chess in the 1990s. It is a pleasure to write about today’s chess world. This is especially true of the pieces that appeared previously in New in Chess, a Dutch English-language periodical. In a sense, this publication is the school paper of top chess, because all the top players in the world contribute to it regularly. The knowledge that the same people I was writing about were also my magazine readers, gave a feeling of personal involvement and made the writing of the book more exciting. I hope it hasn’t influenced my outspokenness.

In addition, this book is based on material that previously appeared in the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad; the magazine of the Royal Dutch Chess Federation, Schakend Nederland; Playboy magazine (the Dutch edition); and the American Web site The Chess Café (http://www.chesscafe.com). Much has been changed, and hopefully improved. Where needed, the stories have been updated to reflect a 1999 perspective. Finally I would like to extend my thanks to the following people who assisted in the production of this book: Taylor Kingston, Maureen Peeck, Joan Russell, Joseph Russell and Willem Tissot.

Hans Ree

Amsterdam, June 1999

The World Champions

The Siamese Twins

It has never again been quite as hellish as it was the first time. That match lasted exactly five months. On September 10, 1984, in the Hall of Columns in Moscow, Anatoly Karpov made his first move against Gary Kasparov. On February 9, 1985 he resigned the 48th game of the match. Even that wasn’t truly the end of the contest, but the next day the match was stopped prematurely because both players were totally exhausted. The score at that time was 5-3 in Karpov’s favor, not counting draws. He needed one more win to decide the match, but for the last two and a half months he had been trying unsuccessfully to secure that last win, and in the meantime Kasparov had been catching up, reducing a 5-0 deficit to 5-3.

In the beginning, Karpov had not been in a hurry. At the point where he was ahead 5-0, he was no longer content to win the match and remain world champion. He now wanted to win by a score of 6-0, the most annihilating victory a world champion had ever scored. He no longer took any chances, thinking the sixth win would come eventually. Of course Kasparov couldn’t afford to take any risks either, since any further mistake could cost him the match. So for several months they played to boring draws. The Western journalists finally left. The only ones forced to stay in Moscow were the chess correspondents of international news agencies. They were aware that fewer and fewer newspapers were printing their reports. At that point, the Hall of Columns had to be vacated for the funeral of General Ustinov. He had been waiting long enough and had given Karpov every chance to finish the match, said the chess reporters.

For the last month, Karpov and Kasparov played in a hotel on the outskirts of Moscow called Hotel Sport. If that had been the title of a short story, you would have known someone was going to hang himself. Kasparov knew that should he lose the next game, he would never again find the strength to play Karpov. No one who loses a world championship match by the score of 6-0 should ever try again. He should consider gardening. Kasparov’s seconds lapsed into total silence, because no one wanted to be responsible for the fatal advice that could cause the end of Kasparov’s chess career. Kasparov ended up sleeping in his mother’s room, so that at any time during the night he could hear her comforting words. Later he has often said that chess is a game that is all about killing your opponent’s spirit. During those last months of 1984 he must have felt as if he was being murdered very slowly.

But Karpov missed his chance. Had he played a few aggressive games he would have won, maybe not by a score of 6-0, but in any case by 6-1, or at worst by 6-2. Those months of dawdling took a toll on Karpov. He was never physically strong and at the end it seemed that even the most advanced medical attention could not keep him going. The match was stopped. At the time it was generally thought that it was at the request of Russian chess officials, afraid of a changing of the guard, and indeed this is most likely, but we cannot be sure. Later, a new match was played in Moscow and Kasparov became world champion. In every match they played thereafter, Karpov knew he had had his opponent on the ropes. If he had finished him off then, he would have been proclaimed the greatest player of all time, and would never have been bothered by Kasparov again. He also lived in the knowledge that whoever gets such a chance and misses it never gets another, because something inside him has been broken. Kasparov, on the other hand, had looked his own death as a chess player in the eyes, and became hardened by the experience. From then on, he wasn’t just chess player, but also chess politician, granting and receiving favors, forming coalitions, making other players dependent on himself, sometimes meting out punishments. It was the same game Karpov had always played so brilliantly, infuriating Kasparov.

A few months later, Karpov was in Amsterdam. He was furious. He had given Kasparov 48 free lessons, had been robbed of his victory, and on top of all that everybody thought the match had been stopped at his request. Is that not how it happened? I asked him. Karpov replied: Many things have happened that you people in the West don’t know about. Russians say this very often. But he wouldn’t add anything else, and perhaps there really wasn’t anything else to add. It happened at a small dinner party organized by Jan Timman. Everybody got very drunk, even Karpov, but he still didn’t say anything to satisfy our curiosity. He is used to watching what he says, knowing full well that anything he says is likely to show up in the international press the day after. Under the circumstances, it would be naive to expect candor.

There is something about a world chess championship match that is difficult to render in a newspaper report: namely the fact that it takes so long. At least that was true until Kasparov and Short decided in 1993 to wind things up more quickly. The last long match, the one between Kasparov and Karpov in New York and Lyon in 1990, took three months. Most chess journalists show up for a couple of weeks in the beginning, and then come back toward the end if the match is still close. A few journalists stay the entire time, but they’ll have a sense of time that is totally different from that of the players: they’ll get bored. There are only three games per week, sometimes even fewer. The players don’t get bored; they get exhausted. Their so-called days off aren’t really off, because that’s when they are working on their repertoire of openings. In the days that Karpov and Kasparov played against each other, it would involve about ten assistants. We on the outside think that should make things easier. On the contrary, it makes it more difficult. The seconds’ work has to be tightly organized; otherwise it is worthless. They start hating each other. Their boss gets the feeling that someone on the team is leaking secret information to the opponents. A mood results like that in a bunker under month-long enemy fire. Kasparov and Karpov also came to hate each other – of course. Even when two close friends have to play a match lasting only two weeks, their friendship is sorely tested. I know how wrung out I always felt after a three-week tournament. What is it like when the match lasts four times as long and the world title and millions in prize money are at stake? This is very difficult to imagine.

Their penultimate match was in 1987 in Seville. I went there for the beginning. The mood among the journalists was one of excited expectation. Two weeks into the match I went home and then came back near the end. You would have thought the match was still very exciting, what with a final score of 12-12. But the chess journalists who had stayed in Seville all that time had become weary. They were bored and wanted to go home. It was rumored that the match was all a hoax. Supposedly, Kasparov had gone over to Karpov’s house in an armored car. People asked what I thought the two of them had discussed there. I had no trouble coming up with something: for example a joint strategy to beat the Russian tax system. I had been sniffing the fresh air of Amsterdam all that time, I was out of touch with the intrigues that had been spun in my absence. Those who had remained in Seville weren’t really interested in chess anymore. The stories they filed were becoming routine, at a time when, for the players, the hottest weeks had just begun. It had been like that the first time around. That time, the greatest drama had taken place in Hotel Sport, but when it happened, no one had noticed. By then, almost everyone had left, because the action had become so boring to outsiders.

New York 1990 was their last match. It was an unlikely place for a world title match between two players from the Soviet Union. It was Kasparov who had insisted on the location. It is his dream to make chess a popular game in the U.S. There is a lot of money there and only a few important chess tournaments. If this field can ever be plowed, there is sure to be a rich harvest. I arrived for the match a few days in advance, so I could get my bearings before getting totally absorbed by the action.

As it turns out, I am unable to escape chess: on Broadway, close to Time Square, there is a row of little tables on the sidewalk. People are playing chess and backgammon. At one of the tables sits Roman Dzindzichashvili. For a time he had been one of the best players in the world. He is also a talented but reckless poker and blackjack player. When he emigrated from the Soviet Union to Israel, it was rumored he did it because he could not pay his gaming debts. It was the same story when he later moved to Germany, and then – for a brief period – to Holland. And indeed, one day when a big tournament opened in Amsterdam, a rather terrifying little party was waiting for him: the sort of gentlemen who don’t look as if they are in the habit of solving their differences with words. Dzindzi never showed up for the tournament. In the meantime, he was playing simultaneous chess and asking his opponents to loan him money. At the time I noticed he was avoiding me. Although I had not lent him any money, he didn’t seem to realize that: his financial administration had become too complicated. He took refuge in the U.S., and after a short time small ads appeared in the American chess publications, offering a reward for information on his whereabouts. Today, all that has been settled. He is doing fine. He has married a young lawyer and become a father. This last accomplishment has even brought him some nice extra earnings, because, as he tells me, his little boy was picked to advertise pampers on billboards all over New York. So he no longer has to do what he used to do there: wait on a street corner until someone he can win a few dollars from walks by. But he can’t stop: he has to play.

I think he is really someone from another era. At one time world champions feared him. Now he is out in the street waiting for opponents, just like before World War II, when the old champions, Lasker, Capablanca, and Alekhine would sit around in the chess cafes and play anyone who stopped by, just because they loved chess. Those were romantic times, quite unlike today in New York, when a world championship match has become a quasi-military operation with months of preparation and a team of twenty assistants. This is often the perception. But it is wrong to recognize romanticism only in its earlier mold. The romanticism of a Kasparov or a Karpov has a harder edge. They are people who sacrifice everything to reach a goal. Playing a match for the world championship means thinking of nothing else for six months. Cynics will tell you they would do the same for three million dollars in prize money. But they are wrong – they don’t even know what they are talking about.

I have another chance encounter in the street: someone from Karpov’s entourage. He is Tom Fürstenberg, a Dutch computer expert I know well. He is a frequent visitor at the house Karpov gets to use while he is in New York. I’ll give you Karpov’s phone number, Tom says to me. Maybe he’ll want you to do an interview. Could it be? Just before the match? I hesitate. I don’t like to ask for favors. Why don’t you give me your number too, says Tom. I’ll give it to Karpov, maybe he’ll call you. That suits me much better. I give him my number and for the next few days I wait for a call, which of course never comes. Hardly surprising! I’m not being a good journalist. That is because I haven’t fully accepted my role as a reporter and really want to be a chess player. One reason to become a professional chess player is never to be in a situation where you have to ask for favors. We chess players have a strong sense of hierarchy. When three chess players go through a swinging door, they’ll go in the order of their Elo-rating, writes the British player Raymond Keene. I am not too happy with the fact that I am the one who writes about Karpov and Kasparov instead of them writing about me. Asking for an interview, with a chance of being refused, is another step backward. When I played chess against Karpov, I did not ask him for a draw, but waited until he offered me one. I fully realize there is only a slight chance I’ll play Karpov again in the future, and that my ambivalence as a journalist does nothing to change that. I’ll call him, I said to Tom. In my heart I know I won’t.

Actually, it is quite possible that Karpov would want to say a few words, for he must take offense at the publicity he is getting in New York, which initially is downright hostile. The Kasparov camp is given every opportunity to spread its political propaganda: Karpov is a communist, Brezhnev’s personal pet, later that of Gorbachev. Kasparov champions democracy. Around the time the match is to begin, I am watching a television show about it. When Karpov is being mentioned you see tanks and portraits of Stalin. When Kasparov is featured, the screen shows young mothers with children, waiting for the better future he symbolizes. Provided the viewers are able to keep the names of the two players apart, the show does not let them forget for a moment who is the good guy and who the bad guy. Not entirely justified, I would say. Kasparov is a former member of the Central Committee of the Komsomol. He became a party member at a very young age and has put his connections with high party officials to good use. When people ask about this he says: I had to do it in order to become world champion. That may be so. But most world champions from the Soviet Union got their titles without being party members. On the other hand, Karpov did enjoy so much political protection and wielded so much influence that it is indeed conceivable that his successor had to be someone just as opportunistic as he was.

A world championship match is also a social club. During the first two weeks chess players from all over the world come not only to witness the games, but also to see each other. The American newspapers profess amazement at the grimy East European enclave that has been established in smoke-free New York City. The Russians laugh at the No Smoking signs and grind their cigarette butts into the carpet. They are used to thumbing their noses at senseless regulations. Pretty soon the pressroom is like a giant ashtray, and I feel at home. Najdorf has arrived from Argentina; he attends all world championship matches. After World War II, he was hoping for a while to become world champion. Today, in 1990, he is eighty years old, indefatigable, and a living legend. He is also very wealthy, not from playing chess, but from doing business. To keep busy, he writes articles for the Argentine newspaper Clarin. Since 1886 there have been thirteen world chess champions. Najdorf tells me he has played against eleven of them. With Lasker, who became champion in 1894, he had only played bridge, so that didn’t count. An excellent record, that will probably never be broken. I myself have played against eight world champions, from Euwe to Karpov. And with much less success than Najdorf, but never mind, I was in there, pitching.

I will never play against Kasparov. Perhaps that was the reason why I once quarreled with him at a meeting of the Grandmasters Association. If I can’t play chess against him, I’ll fight him with words. After the meeting, many chess players came over to me and said I had spoken well. World champions are never popular, not a single one of them. They are admired and feared, and everyone is always glad when they lose.

There are so many distractions in the commentary and press rooms that we reporters hardly even go to the theater where the match is being played. We just look at television screens. Only the general public goes to the match hall to feel the tension. Those outsiders are doing the right thing, I notice when I make an exception and go to one of the games. The experience is altogether different from watching the TV screens. The scene was almost unbearable to look at. I didn’t last long. The game took too long and was too tense. It is almost impossible to get through half an hour in which no moves are made.

The player who is not on move studies the facial expressions of his opponent. Both players have complained about the constant staring, but you can’t very well forbid it. These two players have sat facing each other now for almost six years, during more than 150 games. And when they weren’t playing against each other they were already preparing for their next match. During all that time each was the most important person in the other’s life.

During those years both players have married. Initially, their wives may have thought there would be room for something else besides chess in the heart of a world champion. However, they must have realized very quickly that that was not the case. At times some of their laments reach the outside world. Kasparov’s marriage was dissolved very quickly, and his wife told a newspaper that she was going in hiding because she was afraid of her husband. Karpov’s wife, Natasha, was asked on television: Do you like chess players? No, she replied, Not at all, they are very tiresome people.

Karpov and Kasparov also seem to find each other very tiresome. The newspapers say so, and it is probably true, but they also both know that the so much hated opponent is also the only person in the world who can understand what they have both been through since 1984. There is still no move. The players continue to stare at each other. Today, they will do so for five hours, and the match will last three months. I reflect that it is indeed a picture of hell I am looking at, if hell is a place where every action will be repeated to all eternity, so that even the greatest passion eventually becomes torture.

At the board, a move has been made. A half-hour has gone by. I had planned to stay in the auditorium for many more hours, but I can’t stand watching any more and go to the press room, where people are cracking jokes and outdoing each other trying to dream up reasons why this is the worst title match in history. For the many experts, the match in progress is always the worst one in history. It is part of chess folklore to say that. I am thinking there will soon be a book by Kasparov (which by the way did not happen) and we’ll find out we have watched a totally different match than the one the players saw for themselves. But even that won’t keep us from declaring again, the next time, that the match in progress is of poor caliber. Chess is after all the game of regicide. If you cannot beat the world champion at chess you can always make up for it by saying he made a bad move.

After three weeks I get out of New York. It is high time to go see if there is life beyond the chessboard. For Kasparov and Karpov things have only just started: they have another two-and-a-half months to go. The note with Karpov’s phone number is sitting there, unused. Oh well, I wouldn’t have understood him anyway. He belongs to a different species. Cut out of harder material, admirable but incomprehensible. I am planning a later trip to Lyon, where the second half of the match will be played, but somehow I don’t get around to it. And maybe that is just as well, for in the live coverage I see, I detect the boredom that sets in among the outsiders when a match goes into its third month. Again there are the rumors that the match has been fixed, just like the ones I heard in Seville and those others circulating in 1986, in Leningrad. You would almost be led to think the players have been cheating the entire world for the last six years, from the first move to the last. Fischer is the only one who seriously thinks that.

Next, Karpov and Kasparov take all their vacation days, and when it becomes clear that the match will go beyond Christmas, the woman in charge of the pressroom throws in the towel. She shouts that Gary and Anatoly are assholes and goes home for good. The last game is played on New Year’s Eve in front of only a handful of spectators. Two days later, at the awards ceremony, millions of dollars are handed out, and immediately thereafter Karpov leaves for Italy, where he will play for another three weeks in a very heavy top-level tournament. Its first round has been postponed for a day: they have waited for him. He wins the tournament.

Television Match

Gary Kasparov is someone who likes big, weighty words. Once, one of his readers had had enough. Kasparov’s language made him think of the literary prize contest, the Bulwer-Lytton Competition, in which participants had to compose the worst possible first sentence of a novel. Thinking of a typical first sentence of one of Kasparov’s articles, Geoff Barnes from Dubai suggested in a letter to Inside Chess, the following: Due to an unusual juxtaposition of the socio-economic and pseudohistorical currents which swirl at the heights of human capability, I came to exercise the full, shattering force of my immense powers of profound concentration upon a question which may be of interest to those readers of sufficiently discerning intellect to grasp the complete dimensions of the intellectual depth of my conclusions. Barnes offered a second example, but I’ll pass on that one. We readily recognize our Big Boss in this parody.

It may be easy to imitate Kasparov’s writing style, but it will be more difficult to duplicate the technical content of his writings. In terms of chess technique, everything he writes is interesting, worthy of admiration, and often baffling. Several of the articles in Chess Life that reader Barnes found so irritating, dealt with two games Kasparov played simultaneously against Spanish television viewers in 1990 and 1991. Kasparov almost lost one of these games. He went on to give an elegant and profound analysis of this game, but that is not relevant here. What is interesting is how the game was completed, because it shows something about his character. He wants to win everything, at any cost, even if it is just a game against television viewers, a game that counts for nothing. This time he needed to be extremely clever, and not only at the chessboard. (D)

Spanish TV Viewers-Kasparov

This was the position after Black’s 45th move. At this point, the TV series had almost come to an end. It was not possible to finish the game normally. What to do? It would have been normal procedure to have the game arbitrated by another grandmaster in the last show of the series, but that did not sit well with Kasparov. He knew he was losing and that an outside expert would have to hand the win to the viewers. So he had to think of something else. Here, Kasparov writes: However, with a shrewd plan of campaign already in my mind, by haggling with Leontxo, I managed to obtain conditions that were so necessary for its successful implementation.

Leontxo Garcia, host of the show, eventually agreed to the following arrangement: Kasparov would complete the game in a simultaneous speed-chess session on six boards. His six opponents would be the grandmasters Illescas and Ochoa, two talented children and two representatives of the television viewers. Illescas and Ochoa would get five minutes clock time, the children ten, and the TV viewers fifteen minutes. Kasparov himself would get fifteen minutes at all boards, but for him all the clocks would be running at the same time. At first impression it seemed as if Kasparov would not be able to escape defeat this way either. Everyone was convinced White was winning. At least one of the players should be able to find the correct solution. And in the worst case the others could always force a draw by perpetual check. But Kasparov knew it would turn out differently. He had analyzed the position well. He knew it was less simple than it seemed, and that only Illescas would be capable of seeing through all the subtleties of the position when studying it at home. And for the others he had prepared a few surprises. In the first place he knew that the tempting variation: 46. Qa6+ Kd7 47. Qb7+ Kd6 48. Bc7+ Kc5 49. Bxg3 would not give White the advantage because of 49...g5!! with good counter-play. It soon became clear that all his opponents had thought this far in their at-home analysis. At all the boards the same moves were played, starting from the first diagram: 46. Qb5-c6+ Kc8-b8 47. d5-d6 (threatening mate) 47...Rd2-a2! A move his opponents had not expected, perhaps with the exception of Illescas. At this point, according to Kasparov, the simplest way for White to win would have been to play 48.Qb5, but everybody played 48. Qc6-c7+ (to counter the likely 48. d7, Kasparov had prepared 48...Ne1) 48...Kb8-a8 and this resulted in the following position: (D)

The first game to end was that against one of the television viewers. Here, the position of our second diagram evolved as follows: 49. Qc7xf7 Ra2-a3 50. Kg1-g2?? Nd3-f4+ 51. Kg2-f1 Ra3-a1 mate. Kasparov now led by 1-0. In addition, this unexpected result had planted fear in the hearts of his opponents. The two children decided to play it safe, and both obtained draws by perpetual check. One of them by playing (after 49...Ra3) 50. Qf7-d5+ Ka8-b8 51. Bb6-c7+ Kb8-c8 52. Qd5-e6+ Kc8-b7 53. Qe6-d5+, and the other one a move earlier, playing: 49. Qc7-c6+ Ka8-b8 50. Bb6-c7+ Kb8-a7 51. Bc7-b6+. This left three boards to go with Kasparov in the lead by a score of 2-1, but on all three he had a losing position. Then Ochoa went off the track. Starting from the second diagram he played 49. Qc7xf7 Ra2-a3 50. Qf7-d5+ Ka8-b8 51. Bb6-e3. Here, he could of course have forced a draw, just as one of the children had done, but his pride got the better of him. 51...Nd3-e5 52. Be3-f2 Bg3xf2+ 53. Kg1xf2 Ra3-f3+ 54. Kf2-g2 Rf3-f5. At this point the position, according to Kasparov, was about even, but Ochoa, running out of time, made a couple of blunders and Kasparov won. The score was now 3-1.

Thus far, Kasparov had kept his clock running at the board of Illescas. He considered that game lost in any event. And indeed, Illescas found the winning moves. From the position of the second diagram he played 49. Qc7xf7 Ra2-a3 50. Qf7-d5+ Ka8-b8 51. Qd5-b5! and despite spirited opposition from Kasparov, Illescas won the game. Kasparov was still ahead by 3-2. Now there was only one television viewer left to play. This viewer had been following the action and hadn’t made many moves himself. He had reached the same position as Illescas after Black’s 51st move, but he didn’t have much time left on the clock, certainly not enough to see how Illescas won and then to follow his example. Finally, this TV viewer drew his game by 51...Kb8-a8 52. Qb5-d5+ Ka8-b8 53. Qd5-b5 forcing a repetition of moves. The final score: 3½-2½ in Kasparov’s favor. In his other game against the television viewers, in which he played white, Kasparov had already won an overwhelming victory. This brought the combined score of the two games to 2-0. Mission accomplished.

This was an instructive episode for anyone who is a student of Kasparov’s life and art. One has to have respect for the energy and the total commitment he shows in dealing with everything, but in this case I should think many Spanish chess enthusiasts came away with the feeling that those television viewers had been robbed of a well-deserved victory by some pretty dubious trickery.

Karpov on Karpov

Here is something that has probably happened to everyone at one time or another. A tells a story to B who tells it to someone else and it comes back to A via C and D. A doesn’t recognize his own story anymore. I was reminded of this scenario while reading the Dutch translation of Karpov’s autobiography. There were three intermediaries between Karpov and me: the Russian who did the writing, the English translator and the one who translated the English into Dutch. Whose story was I actually reading? The book contained peculiar errors, which couldn’t possibly have been made by Karpov himself. For example, that Korchnoy wasn’t allowed to go to the Candidates’ Tournament in Curaçao in 1962, or that the headstrong Kasparov wanted to play the world championship in Wellington in 1993, although the offer from Lyon was more attractive. In these cases we can at least reconstruct the original meaning and what must have gone wrong en route. But sometimes it isn’t so easy. Karpov appears to have said that in New York only those journalists who were on Kasparov’s side were admitted to the match. This is incorrect. Did he really say or write it or is one of the intermediaries responsible? It remains a mystery.

Though I just referred to the Russian who did the writing of Karpov’s autobiography, it isn’t quite clear who is the true author of the book. It is well known that the name that appears on the cover of a book is not necessarily that of the actual writer. It goes on in the best of circles. I remember how shocked I was when I heard that former world champion Max Euwe hadn’t written all his books himself, and I still don’t really approve of this sort of thing. Once, when I was on my way to the candidate matches in Sarajevo in 1991, I came across an English language Yugoslavian magazine featuring a chess column by Karpov. How interesting, I thought. But pleasure soon turned into disappointment when I began to recognize the inimitable style of chess journalist Bjelica. My suspicions were confirmed when it became clear that the column was mainly concerned with recommending Bjelica’s books. The Dutch publisher of Karpov on Karpov assured me that there was no question of a ghostwriter in this case. But he was quite possibly misinformed. In the Russian version (which came out earlier) Igor Akimov is mentioned as being responsible for the literary adaptation. (I know Akimov from an interview he gave to Genna Sosonko and the Dutch journalist Max Pam in Lyon. Akimov claimed to be able to cure cancer by the laying-on of hands, that is, if the cancer hadn’t spread. It reminded me of the cartoon where a man arrives with a piece of steak at the vet’s and asks Is there any hope, doctor?) Whatever Akimov’s contribution to the book may have been, Karpov scholars assure me that the authentic voice of the world champion came over loud and clear.

It’s almost impossible to read Karpov’s autobiography without comparing it to Kasparov’s. Karpov himself must have often had it in mind. He writes that Kasparov and he have absolutely nothing in common. Those who have read both books will find this

Reviews for The Human Comedy of Chess

[reverend4baron · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Thoroughly enjoyable. Thoroughly Dutch.

[Ben Horrocks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There are definitely some interesting stories that are shared. I had a hard time with the flow of the book, such as it was.