Kasparov's 'Crisis in Seville'

(page 2 of 3)

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In 1985 the situation had been reversed. I had gone into the final game leading by a point, and Karpov needed to win to tie the match and save the title he had held since 1975. In that decisive game Karpov started out with an all-or-nothing attack. At the critical moment he was betrayed by his own instincts and failed to find the best moves. He had started out the game playing in my direct style only to slow down to his own more cautious approach in midstream, with predictably poor results.

The Secret of My Preparation

When preparing for my turn on the other side of this situation, I recalled that critical encounter. What strategy should I employ with the white pieces in this must-win final game? There was more to think about than game 23 and game 24, of course. These were also games 119 and 120 between us, an extraordinary number of top-level encounters between the same two players, all played in a span of thirty-nine months. It felt like one long match, with this final game in December, 1987, the climax of what we had started in September 1984. My plan for the final game had to consider not only what I would like best but what my opponent would like least. And what could be more annoying for Karpov than my turning the tables and playing like Karpov?

Had I not battled against Karpov for 119 games, I would have been incapable of surviving the all-important 120th. The loss of game 23 itself had the potential to be crushing, and I had less than twenty-four hours to prepare what could be my last game as world chess champion. The secret of my preparation? Playing cards with my team and getting a good five or six hours of sleep.

The aggregate score of our world championship marathon was sixteen wins apiece and eighty-seven draws. Victory in this 120th game would mean not only winning this match but taking the lead in our overall score. So why cards and sleep instead of opening preparation? After 119 games with Karpov there was nothing my team and I were going to uncover in a few hours of anxious analysis. We decided on a basic strategy, nothing more than that. The rest of the time was better spent recovering my nervous and physical energy for the battle ahead. This might sound strange given my typically obsessive preparation, but it was a simple matter of allocation of resources. Here, I would be best served to trade time for quality. The strategy I had chosen would require not explosive energy but a slow burn.

Part Chess, Part Boxing Match

The magnificent Teatro Lope de Vega was packed for game 24. The entire game was shown live on Spanish television. The usual pregame murmur of the audience had been replaced by a low roar. I was later told that the excited Spanish radio and television commentators sounded as if they were covering the final round of a heavyweight boxing match, which in a sense they were.

The arbiter started my clock and I pushed my c-pawn forward two squares, just as I had done eight times previously in the match. The difference would come in the next few moves as I kept my center pawns back and instead developed on the flanks, carefully avoiding a do-or-die battle. I opened slowly, even a little passively, to keep as many pieces as possible on the board. This technique would put psychological pressure on Karpov, despite his expertise in such maneuvers. With no clear, forcing continuations he would constantly be tempted to simplify and exchange pieces even at the cost of a slightly inferior position. Obviously with fewer pieces on the board the level of complexity would drop, reducing the chances of a decisive result, but as long as I could put a sufficiently high-quality price tag on these exchanges, I felt I was getting good value.

My slow-cook method had the additional advantage of getting Karpov into serious time trouble. With the stakes so high he was being extra-cautious, taking valuable minutes to double-check moves he would normally make quickly. As the game progressed, Karpov exchanged half the pieces, but his position was still under uncomfortable pressure. He was so close to equalizing on every move, but he couldn't quite get his head above water; in the meantime his clock was becoming a factor.