The Dirtiest World Chess Championship EVER

ladies and gentlemen if you clicked on this video then get ready for the wildest ride of your life it's the 1978 world chess championship being competed for by anatoly karpov and victor korchnoy these two men absolutely hate each other why anatoly karpov embodies everything about the soviet regime and viktor korchnoy was a defector anatoly karpov was cool calm and collected and had a restricting playing style whereas viktor korchnoy was all over the place on the chessboard and was loud brash and spoke his mind the format of the match is the first person who wins six games will become the world champion i will take you through the story and all the crazy controversies to relive this incredible world championship match there was so much controversy during this match that it started before a move had even been played because victor korchnoy defected to switzerland from the soviet union the soviets would not allow him to put the swiss flag next to his name on the table we're kicking off the chess coverage in game number eight the first seven games were drawn but the first controversy began in game number two when the korchnoy team accused the person delivering anatoly karpov a blueberry yogurt of sending him signals they were arguing it could be some sort of secret message for the chessboard whatever but in game number eight anatoly karpov refused to shake hands with victor korchnoy this was simply an unprecedented thing to do i mean first of all it's literally expressly written in the rules and probably they were trying to shake up the psyche of viktor korchnoy the game began with the standard ruy lopez bishop to b5 a6 bishop back to a4 knight f6 and here black has a few different ways of playing the position the classical approach with bishop to e7 something that karpov really enjoys b5 and d6 but cortroy says look man the pawn's hanging okay i'm going to take it d4 here we have b5 bishop b3 and d5 this approach to the rulo pass to kind of open up the center a little bit as close as it looks they have traded the e pawns uh actually it's very trendy nowadays as well uh and uh really the it's it's a significantly more dynamic position after knight d2 and knight c5 basically black rotates the knight multiple times through the center of the board and applies pressure to the bishop on b3 with that like lingering pressure right well karpa plays the move c3 we have g6 from cortnoy queen e2 bishop g7 and karpov says look man you're taking a little bit too long to get all the pieces developed so i'm going to play the move knight to d4 making you make a decision if you take my knight like this then you've improved the structure and then if you take the bishop i'm going to take with my knight and karpov will get exactly what he wants you will get weak positional kind of outpost to plant his pieces he will move his bishop he will bring his rook like this and surgically methodically he will pick apart korchnoy so for that reason coachnoy actually takes the pawn in e5 and invites this i mean the thing is about this position and he could have been reeling from the fact that he didn't get a handshake to start the game uh the problem with this is that court courtney is just under fire before he's able to get settled now it's interesting kharbov was a methodical player right but the thing is he very rarely went for the tactical complications unless he was absolutely certain that there was nothing the opponent could do in terms of complicating the position like karpov would play the best moves but only if he was absolutely certain what he was going for was the best thing and you know even though court schnoy has some active pieces the truth is that moves like rook g8 are simply not going to cut it rook g8 guards the bishop from hanging but now these two p you know these two pieces disallow black from castling kingside and now karpov just takes on c4 we get dc4 and plays a very common bishop c2 so even in his attacking anatoly karpov shows restraint like he will play the best move methodically shutting down everything that his opponent wants to do so we get knight jumping into d3 trying to disconnect the circulation now look at this move bishop h6 look at that that's such a karpovian method of attack if you take on h6 i take back you go rook g6 or let's just say you go rg7 to guard the f7 pawn karpov's best move here like very well could just be rook to d1 a slow improving move applying an extra layer of pressure and making it impossible for blank to successfully defend like maybe there's some tactical shine but that's what that's what carpool was going for now courtney banks up to f8 and karpov just again very con just calmly improves trades off wins the pawn and activates all his pieces down the center line takes on f8 and there's really no way you can take i mean if you take with the with the king which is what happens in the game between f3 and knight h6 and uh this pressure down f7 and against your rook is simply too much and now karpov does find a nice little flare here to finish things off but i mean this isn't flare you know this isn't flare as much as it is just with a winning move this nice move rook d7 beautiful move because if bishop takes d7 the bishop is overloaded queen takes f7 rook f7 and like this would have been a version of the arabian checkmate is what it's called with rook and knight normally it's in the corner but this would have been it and uh rook b8 takes takes and knight to d8 very nice move and you know to get to the back rank cutting off the rook from the circulation if king 28 or king to g8 there was queen to f8 mate and the king is just simply smothered here uh with queen and rook uh this was the first decisive game in the match so with this win anatoly karpov waited until the eighth game but he didn't wait he would have liked to win it earlier but now he has a one nothing lead so as the story went in this match when one side started playing mind games and showing disrespect to the other the other side had to respond karpov wouldn't shake hands with korchnoy so korchnoy took out sunglasses and started putting them on during games reflecting the vision back at karpov credit to olympio urhan for that coverage he's an amazing chess historian and author check him out on twitter i've put a link in the description and so with that we move to game number 11 in the match because again every other game was drawn now we have g3 which is just like that move in and of itself isn't disrespectful or hilarious but no modern world championship is ever beginning with the move g3 and there's some people you know watching this are like hey i play g3 i don't know why you sound like that but look at what courchnoy plays i mean this is so nonstandard i understand that if you're looking at this like a beginner intermediate player you're like i don't understand he's playing the king's indian attack what's so rare about that gotham you have a youtube video about it yes but this is so non-standard the meta of chess is d4 e4 c4 maybe throw in a knight f3 here and there look at what he's doing he's just pushing pawns in front of his king like victor korchnoy was a was a bare knuckle fighter you know like this guy was constantly taking the fight to to his opponents and karpov in particular he plays queen e2 98 bishop e3 such a weird way of playing but he's slowly going to build up some sort of attack and this obviously throws a guy like karpov off who is at the time the best in the world but you know still has to deal with some super eccentric stuff so d4 takes takes and and you know karpa played this move d5 which really forces korchanov's hand in playing the move e5 now coach noyes got six pawns on dark square so carpo is gonna try to take the counteract to that he's going to try to play the game on the line squares because the dark squares are absolutely dominated by victor so we have queen to d7 knight c3 rook c8 and this nice idea queen to f1 the idea here is you're trying to win the fight actually for the h3 square because very quickly you can turn things around on your opponent h3 g4 f5 now you combine light and dark and a if you control both color complexes on a chess board you're probably going to win the game there's only two there's no purple complex b5 or hot pink b5 and that's exactly what he does and karpov starts a counter attack on the queen side right he plays this whole b4 idea now we have bishop g4 counter-attacking the queen on d7 karpov did not just blunder his queen so we have e6 knight to a4 knight to a5 yeah trying to transfer the knight in both guys trying to jump in with their horses so knight c5 attacks the queen it has to move and coach schneider is making methodical progress in fact court schnoi is almost playing the way karpov would be playing in his position improving his position on both sides taking space on both sides disallowing his opponent's counter play on both sides right so knight back to b7 looking to trade the active knight and he trades it he trades it he trades his act of peace but he has rook c1 i mean that was also black's potential most active piece and this bishop and queen are patrolling the entire diagonal they're not allowing the knight to move at all so karpov plays an improving move and so does court schnoy and karpov tries to get a little bit of counter play and court snowy invites said he says come and get somebody okay queen c1 i'm guarding my bishop from your rook and i'm maintaining this pressure and it's like karpov is getting car puffed like this over exertion into his position actually comes back to bite like literally karpov's one active move of this entire game immediately comes back to bite and after bishop a6 like corsnoy is just ripping it all apart rook b8 takes takes exchange down and the rest of the game is coach noy just demonstrating technique getting in with the rooks karpov tries to create a little bit of counter play but i mean it's a long game but corso is doing everything right he's controlling the pace he's completely dominating the only open file now there is a new open file as i said that but you know this knight can't really move out of the way like for example i'll just give you an example you can't go knight a7 it looks like a fork but you surrender control of c7 so i would play a move like this and i laser beam everything so you just can't do it and and karpov just kind of gets carpooled in this game which is like so strange like karpov plays a lot of moves and korchnoy was just dominating from start to finish even here if it looks mildly scary with the queen coming in and the bishop getting activated and oh my god there's a check oh no it's you know karpov like literally played a move and resigned which is like hilarious i mean think about it the guy played the move and courtesy is just sitting there maybe flexing like he's still here we could have had lunch 40 minutes ago you're still playing like carp have played queen d2 and resigned the game so now it's 1-1 we're all square there's a ton of draws obviously but the draws don't count so now it's one to one so coach schnue's glasses are popping off the yogurt controversy the flag controversy the no handshake controversy ladies and gentlemen it's about to get a whole lot spicier so one of the members of team karpov was named dr vladimir zukhar and he was a military psychologist who specialized in hypnosis the story goes that he was there because karpov had trouble sleeping and he helped carp of sleeve but he would sit at the playing hall and stare at courtshi and courchnoy took exception he's like this guy is messing with my you know chi he's hypnotizing me and for this next game that i'm about to show you game number 17 court snoy came like 15 minutes late because he was just basically in a dispute with the arbiters being like this guy's gotta go all right he's doing something to me it's messing with me i'm gonna beat his ass unless you get him out of here and so we start the game analysis now you'll notice it's three it's three one the carp of one games thirteen and fourteen this is game number seventeen so coach schneider's is down 3-1 and he comes to the board a little bit late uh because he was threatening to you know you know beat the guy up so he begins with c4 again just mixing it up every game and we have uh an invitation for mike lascaros which is uh kind of surrendering the center but then karbal would strike back with d5 but we have d4 and a transposition back into anatoly karpov's favorite defense which is just these nimso queens indian defenses uh with with knight f6 e6 bishop b4 so e3 castles bishop d3 c5 d5 i mean it's it's kind of interesting you know karpov goes a lot for these c5 positions but of course fighting more traditionally for the center with the queen spawn is is much more common but okay c5 d5 and now karpov tries to uncork preparation this kind of doesn't strike me as carp of style but you know when you're the greatest in the world i mean your style is you know it's it you it like whatever you play is going to happen right so b5 we'll talk about styles the whole point the point of this move is well on the surface you know you're sacrificing a pawn like takes takes and pawn takes here okay white is up a pawn but black is playing a6 and you've already you know completely surrendered control of the center so black will have a lot of pawns in the center meanwhile you need to worry like do you take and activate another piece for black like what are you going to do so coach schneider plays 92. he's like bro just take take my pawn i don't care karpov says i'm going to take the center castle's e5 it's exactly what i said but it's interesting you know because again this court schnoy is kind of the more i mean what to say creative of the two like like karpov doesn't like chaos he would much rather keep his opponent completely suppressed from a play standpoint and court schnoi in this game was able to to really imbalance the position like under normal circumstances here you think just stay with the knight and don't even think about it but bc3 breaks up the structure but allows him kind of open lines allows him to you know chip away here with the c pawn uh you know something else maybe like a different control of d4 like if you had taken with the knight there would be d4 i don't know like something like that and bc3 is just such a strange move and then he plays rook b1 so he immediately justifies it right queen d6 and c4 so he's immediately justifying his idea why he took like that open b file pushing the pawn to c4 d4 and now knight g3 so he's basically saying look anatoly you've got a ton of light scored weaknesses by putting all these pawns on dark squares right so nine c6 happens i play a4 knight a5 and i'm just gonna slowly glue the queen side shut which is what i've done and then i will turn my attention to breaking apart the center and advancing and 20 moves in he's got a winning position against anatoly garpa yes he's down 3-1 but you know he's coming off the hype of wanting to beat up the hypnotist right so we have rook to c8 f4 rook c5 takes takes in this position korchnoy had an absolutely savage tactic he didn't it it's not the fact that he didn't see it as much as it's just so absurd the move that he could have played is rook to be a check now if rook takes there is queen takes queen but karpov would have played this move and here apparently you just go back you go back because now you've baited the king into the line of sight of this rook if this ever opens up for example if i were to play e4 in this position you would just take it there's just i mean there's just nothing here like that doesn't doesn't do anything and the biggest difference is that in this position if you try to play uh rook b5 on its own like this then e4 is very strong because if you take then after take take there is queen c6 and the king's not on f7 so it's not susceptible to things that it could be could have been susceptible to if it was on f7 like different checks like for example queen f5 check in some positions is very strong so oh for example the h7 pawn is hanging in some positions as well but you know courtney took and still got a very good position in fact he goes for a king hunt look at what he's doing to carp the car was kings on d5 for god's sake rook knight rook bishop but because courtship came to the game late he was low on time and so he chose an inaccurate retreat with the knight apparently knight to c2 would have been slightly more accurate threatening knight to b4 and geometrically this king is sort of stranded with the squares that it can go on and the squares that uh victor uh victor cortney controls in this position he goes back to f3 and karpov immediately sacrifices the rook and gets an end game which he's down material in but somehow his knights are very strong and the players are nearing mu 40 by mu 40 they would adjourn the game for the next day that that was the rule of the world championship match so it's getting closer this is move 38 now we have moved 38 by black black is threatening rook c1 and that's made so of course in this position you would play the natural looking move rook to a1 which is what court schnoy played except this move loses on the spot to the absolutely unbelievable knight to f3 check because if king h1 there is this savage savage corner mate with the horses and if you take the lateral check king h1 knight f2 so the best move after rook c6 was just g3 but that i mean knight f3 is an absurd move and you know with with time with with barely any time on the clock court schneider blunders now anatoly karpov has a 4-1 lead in the world championship match the team of court snoy was so stunned when knight f3 landed on the board they didn't leave the playing hall they didn't move for five minutes the story goes i wasn't there i was born in 1995 not 1978. um they just sat there they were in utter disbelief they couldn't i mean what are you gonna do 4-1 karpov now if you've made it this far in the video i'm about to reward you big time at this point victor korchnoy enlisted stephen dwyer and victoria shepard who were american members of ananda marga which was an indian sect they helped train viktor in the art of meditation and yoga to deal with zukar but the craziest thing is both of these individuals were convicted of attempted murder and were out of jail pending a retrial what just anyway the two of them would go to the playing hall and sit in saffron robes to kind of counteract the parapsychology that was going on with zukar the match was nearly suspended because of the role of these two on the team of korchnoy and they basically said that they would keep a low profile until korchnoy broadcasted a live meditation session on television at his hotel room but back to the chess at this point in the match it's game number 28. it's five to two anatoly karpov is a win away from being the world champion once again and we have e4 e5 and something that we've seen before actually one of the games that we looked at earlier had this exact variation we have d4 b5 bishop b3 d5 so far so good and now a wrinkle so we saw court noy go for g6 and bishop g7 and that didn't work out very well so now he makes another bishop move and develops his bishop to e7 this is how chess works you lose a certain way a certain time uh and uh you don't want to do it anymore or you make an adjustment and you keep playing that one way because that's not the end of the story but this game you know we get queen to d7 we have knight to b3 knight back to e6 and keeping keeping more pieces on the board this time only one pawn trait per player special back to h5 bishop to f5 a little bit of pressure here knight queen knight c to d8 kind of a strange move bishop e3 karpov develops a piece a5 and bishop c5 karpov trying to take advantage of the fact that well to be honest christian doesn't really have a lot of breathing room right and even with a move like a4 after it takes takes here karpov can very easily just transfer his knight to d4 and after takes take i mean position is in the balance but maybe he has rook c1 with some pressure down the c file but karma really didn't like that he actually moved his knight back to d2 in a bit more of a safe position then we get c4 c6 and b4 this is a very big decision by karpov essentially saying i have no interest in playing on the queen side i just want to shut down what you want to do right because by playing this move you will never be able to push any of the pawns to do anything so now the game is going to probably be decided down the middle and on the king side but who's more equipped to fight there knight to g5 by kurt snowy queen e2 and g6 now this bishop doesn't have a lot of squares he could go to karpov kind of bites himself in the foot makes makes this trade by making this trade now all of a sudden he's got double g pawns and you know of course knight plays knight to e6 now he's got knight to f4 coming 23 and h5 a very provocative move takes takes and karpov immediately kind of bails out into an end game with two rooks and a knight now korchnoy and kind of the theory about karpov just in general was the fact that even though karpov is a sound technical player who likes to take away his opponent's possibilities court schnoy needed to get games into end games you would think that end games benefit the player that's more technical not true not if you create an end game with a ton of play and all sorts of different possibilities and the longer the game went it seemed that korchnoy was going to have some success that seemed to be the strategy so rook to h4 rook to d1 just bringing a rook king to e7 improving the king's position f3 nice little pawn move open up some space for your king take away the black knights movement then that goes back to e6's all right if i can't go forward i'ma go back knight e3 rook d8 knight g4 knight g5 and if knights decide to meet now they go back now carp of opera offers a repetition and korchnoy again tries to create a sense of imbalance doubling his own pawns but that would have opened up the g file that transformation is actually a lot better for black so he understands that that makes copper retreat back to c2 but that allows korchnoy to play this beautiful idea d4 and the crazy thing is that g4 knight g7 this this looks like a loss of a pawn but at what cost at what cost now all of korchnoy's pieces are very well positioned and even though karpov has to desperately defend this position now the transformation happens again so korchnoy was really good at them at kind of finding these little wrinkles of complication even in positions we might just write off as being end games that are boring and no he created a sense of dynamics look at this position i mean these three pawns are about to march down these two pawns are marching down like someone's gonna win this pawn race right we get king g3 and like that's it like someone is going to win which means someone is going to lose the problem for karpov is he's only got one bond like he had to give up one pawn meanwhile because he lost his apon it's now three on nothing and that's exactly what starts to happen now that pawn is guns now karpov is relying on perpetual check and he sure as hell ain't getting it that king is gonna run around right now go back to d8 and go back to c7 so rook two a6 rook b7 rook g8 check king c7 another check but now the rook blocks and even though it's three pawns versus two one guy's three pawns are a lot closer we get rook g5 b3 rook takes c5 check and karpov again in the match makes a move and resigns and i really wonder if it's like just the thing that he like did or if you know courtney was just sitting there looking at him like bro you for real bro for real you're really playing like he had like eight minutes on the clock and he's just sitting there like looking at him like [Music] you sure now with this victor korchnoy wins and it's now five to three but ladies and gentlemen it's not just five to three because two of the next three games were also won by viktor korchnoy both of those games went over 70 moves it seemed like he had discovered a weakness in anatoly karpov and that weakness was the fact that the longer that the match went on and the longer that these games would go on he would wear on carpool a little bit and it seemed like it was it's now five five the next it's like winner take all so now we have game number 32. anatoly karpov's got the white pieces he plays the move e4 and for reasons i can't fully explain you know kirchner goes back to the pierce defense which is something that he had played and pierced or king's indian the setup uh for those of you who play king's indian it usually involves white playing the move c4 and involves a queen's pawn opening but pierce king's indian all the same and he kind of went back to this because he had played in the match before and i think he got a draw um but it's so strange that he didn't go for e45 given i've just shown you a couple of games that well one game went to karpov but that last game seemed very convincing but that's how the world championship goes it's all about surprises and he plays this move c5 a very provocative move so basically the point is that if you take um d takes c5 by black is is more or less okay and even though you can kind of come and attack the knight it just goes here and uh your pawn wandered into the wrong part of town so that's why karpov plays d5 a very positional approach very very positional approach uh positional meaning that he's just going to try to suppress his opponent right he's not going to let him play b5 so then he plays b6 and now bishop to b7 and here karpov plays this kind of peculiar move bishop c4 and bishop c4 is peculiar because normally you would want to put a knight there in certain positions to put pressure on both of these pawns but the bishop is very good on c4 because he's trying to suppress both of the opponent's pawn breaks like you have to think about where in the position your opponent wants to break with pawns and in this case e6 and b5 are those ways by shutting those down he makes court snoy play in a kind of a a very risky way like knight h5 is not necessary but you know now kind of karpov can just freely improve his position a6 rook d1 rook b8 and h3 just very slowly seeing like is corso just going to sit around and do nothing or is at some point he's going to overextend and that's when i'm going to get him so so we have knight back to d7 and now seems like corsair can't really figure it out himself he's like trying to prepare the move b5 which looks very good but karpov is gonna remove his only defender of the king so he does that and now bishop back to f1 knight back to f6 we have takes takes and even though uh korchnoy got everything that he wanted on the queen side the pawns really block everything like you can't move the knight the rook it's all blocked and so karma plays the move knight back to e2 he says my knight doesn't need to be a target let's transfer it let's transfer it and c3 look at dfc three is you kind of prevent b4 uh and also the second rank is a little bit more open now and you know your queen's not gonna ever be a target from that side so rook to a4 and now bishop to d3 and the other idea defend the center you can camp on c2 so he found this nice little idea to transfer the bishop to c2 queen a8 coach schneids will come in karpov says who's attacking who victor who is attacking who my good sir i don't think he said that i i don't think given the circumstances they said that to each other queen takes e5 knight takes bishop takes rook a7 and karpov's like hold on a minute those spaces i don't know what's going on over here but knight h4 and uh we are on the way and maybe a rook transfer in the future not right now these squares are protected but in the future knight maneuvers out also g2 is guarded because karbov makes these very very sound ideas like attacking and defending at the same time bishop back to c8 now the bishop retreats back to e2 very karpovian wants to put the bishop on f3 instead of where the knight and c4 kicks the knight out of the middle and takes the pawn now quartz noise down a pawn but the position's opening up queen to b8 we have bishop back 2f1 rook c8 queen rotates over and now we got threats so king goes out of the way rook d2 so karpovian just guarding the whole second rank maybe in the future you double up maybe you're going to double up this way i don't know court snipe goes back to c6 queen h6 little improving move forcing the rook to go and guard the king and now knight comes back because it wants to take two steps forward and uh there are not a lot of ways that you can prevent that now he retreats because he doesn't want a queen trade but then he puts his knight on g5 as promised and ladies and gentlemen perhaps here is the most like karpovian move of all it seems like he's been improving his position down the middle he's been improving it down on the king side looking like to set up an attack and then he just realizes that the coordination of the smooshed pieces here is really bad and he plays a simple pawn move and it becomes clear that you cannot prevent anything you can't take because your rook hangs and even with queen to a8 pawn to b5 knight to a5 and pawn to b6 b4 b5 b6 showcasing that on two thirds of the board the game is already decided which means i can just make three pawn moves rook to b7 by black and coachnoy didn't even wait for a move from karpov he simply resigned and anatoly karp have won the 1978 world chess championship and with that we conclude the tantalizing tale of the 1978 world chess championship match between anatoly karpov and victor korchnoy like always if you've made it this far in the video i do very much appreciate you please do let me know in the comments below if there are other historical chess archives i should dive into whether they are games or analysis of people as always if you are a returning viewer welcome back if you're brand new welcome i'm so honored this is the first video that you get to see from me i've got playlists of tons of other chess content for beginners intermediate some for advanced players as well and i do have chess courses link is in the description ladies and gentlemen thank you once again and i will see you in the next video

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 796,668

Keywords: gothamchess, gothamchess openings, gothamchess vienna, anatoly karpov, korchnoi, viktor korchnoi, karpov korchnoi, karpov korchnoi 1978, karpov vs 3 year old, anatoly karpov mikhail osipov, karpov vs korchnoi 1978, karpov vs korchnoi agadmator, anatoly karpov agadmator, anatoly karpov garry kasparov, karpov kasparov, anatoly karpov vs misha, karpov vs fischer, korchnoi caruana, korchnoi vs polgar, historical chess games, famous chess games, world chess championship

Id: ikVKrqYTuJU

Length: 29min 20sec (1760 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 05 2021