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Spectator
4 days ago
- Sport
- Spectator
How England can finally win the Ashes
With the summer's Test matches over, England's cricket coach and captain will now be wondering how to avoid our usual trouncing in Australia this winter. Normally we try to win and we get walloped. On the last three occasions we've ventured Down Under, Australia have either whitewashed us 5-0 or beaten us 4-0 with one game drawn. And, weather permitting, Australia don't just win – they usually crush us by massive, embarrassing margins: an innings and 123 runs, ten wickets, 381 runs… These humiliations show that on their home turf Australia are approximately twice as good as we are. Australia often score more runs in one innings than England can manage in two. Unless we take drastic measures, that could well be the fate that awaits us this winter too. This summer's games in English conditions against an Indian team in transition have exposed chronic weaknesses. Our injury-prone bowlers often find it difficult to take wickets and two of our specialist batsmen average 30-35, instead of the Test match standard of 40-plus. The Aussies will ruthlessly expose these shortcomings – it happens every time. So what to do? Bear with me just a moment while I explain how playing for a draw helped Garry Kasparov wrest the world chess championship from Karpov. The winner was to be the first to win six games. Karpov, the reigning champion, took an early lead: 4-0 (with five draws) after just nine games. So Kasparov switched to a survival strategy. When trying to win he had often lost, so now he concentrated on drawing. It worked: drawing proved much more feasible and, eventually, led to victory. With his opponent exhausted after five gruelling months and 40 draws, Kasparov won two consecutive games. The match was then called off on health grounds but Kasparov went on to win the rematch. A similar strategy could work for our cricketers this winter. Instead of walking straight into another brutal mauling, we could try a devious, Kasparov-inspired plan. The Australians think they are going to bag a bunch of World Cricket Championship points by giving us another drubbing – but in order to do that they have to bowl us out twice. To stop them doing that, we should pack the side with batsmen. I am not suggesting that we pick no bowlers – that would not, as they say, be cricket – but I am suggesting that all our bowlers should also be excellent batsmen. For decades we have been selecting not the best wicketkeeper but the wicketkeeper who bats best; now it is time to double down and do the same with the bowlers. The bowling could be entrusted to, for example, Stokes, Bethell, Root, Dawson and Rehan Ahmed. They can all turn their arm: Stokes, for example, has 230 Test wickets and Root 73. More importantly, they are all good batsmen. They would be joined by wicketkeeper Jamie Smith, Test match batting average 49, and five other batsmen. We would not be sacrificing much by replacing specialist bowlers with batsmen who can bowl a bit. Our specialist bowlers, after all, are not that special and often fail dismally against Australia. In the last Ashes series, the legendary Jimmy Anderson, one of the greatest bowlers ever, only managed a paltry total of five wickets, each of which cost an eye-watering 85 runs. And he averaged just nine with the bat. Meanwhile, in the same series, Joe Root took six wickets with his part-time spin at just 28 runs apiece, while also averaging over 50 with the bat. Admittedly, relying on part-time bowlers means that the Aussies are likely to post huge scores. If Australia win the toss they could well bat for two days and declare when they get to about 800. That is why most of our bowlers should be spinners who can bowl long spells. Their job will be to contain the Australians with defensive fields; fortunately they all have plenty of experience bowling as economically as possible in limited overs cricket. But then it will be Australia's turn to suffer. If they can score 800 with the conventional five or six batsmen, then England's 11 batsmen should also be able to score 800. Normally tailenders do not last long, but we would not have any tailenders – just batsmen. Batsmen all the way down. We would bat and bat… and bat. Against exhausted bowlers, we might even see our number 11 become the first ever to score a Test century. Those mammoth first-innings scores would take the match into the final day with both sides still scheduled to bat again. There simply would not be time for the Aussies to beat us. Will high-scoring draws drive the crowds away? No: it is short, one-sided games and dead rubbers that are the real turn-off. The cricket-loving Australian public would be delighted to see the Poms pose a genuine challenge for once, taking the fight into the fifth day and keeping the series alive. And perhaps – allow me to dream for a moment – having drawn the first four Test matches, in the final game we win the toss and bat, posting 800 again. Then, their minds scrambled after long days in the field, and realising that they can never win, the demoralised Australians begin to understand how Karpov felt. They are skittled out twice – those batsmen who can bowl that I mentioned are all perfectly capable of producing wicket-taking deliveries – and we take the series 1-0. This cunning scheme will be dismissed out of hand as ridiculous. But surely, sleepwalking into another ignominious shellacking is even more stupid? And since I am confident that that is exactly what is going to happen, I am going to lay a big bet on England losing heavily. Happens every time.
The Hindu
26-04-2025
- Sport
- The Hindu
Meet Eugene Torre, the pioneering Asian GM who beat Karpov and befriended Fischer
Viswanathan Anand became Asia's third Grandmaster in 1988. Eugene Torre, the first from the continent to get that most important title for chess players, did it in 1974. He was also the first Asian to play at the Candidates, the qualifying event for the World Championship. He featured in 23 Olympiads for Philippines. He was a friend of the legendary Bobby Fischer, whom he assisted during his 1992 match against Boris Spassky. Excerpts from an interview Torre gave The Hindu: When you were trying to become a GM, Asia was hardly a force in chess. Now, two Asians have contested the World Championship and the Women's World Championship .I am so happy now that China and India are there on top already. Back in my time, other than getting the Grandmaster title, I was really hoping that chess in Asia would be recognised. We were nowhere near the Soviet Union, the United States or the European countries. The players from those countries would treat us just as easy victims. But you changed that perception. And Asia finally got a Grandmaster. Becoming a Grandmaster was more than a dream for me. I was able to do it because my family supported me. And I think it happened with Anand, too, didn't it? I decided, together with my family, that in order to become a Grandmaster, I had to campaign in Europe for one year, because there was no tournament in Asia. I didn't get even a norm, but the European tour proved a preparation for my Interzonal championship [part of the World Championship qualifier] at Leningrad in 1973; as the Asian champion, I had qualified for it. At that time it was inconceivable for an Asian player to campaign in Europe for a long time. I was able to talk to a local newspaper, and we agreed that I would send reports of my tournaments and they would pay me $300 a month. During that time, life was very cheap in Madrid, I was able to get a hostel for one dollar a day. I was homesick, though. I managed to make telephone calls home. But for just three minutes I had to pay $20. I just wanted to hear the voice of my family, you know. That would make me feel less isolated. So I returned without making a norm. But next year I got an invitation, thanks to Florencio Campomanes [who would later become FIDE president], to play at Malaga, where I made my first Grandmaster norm. I had to win my last five games for the norm, though. When I came home, there was a big celebration. Another highlight of your career was beating Anatoly Karpov during the Marlboro-Loyola Kings Challenge, which you won, in Manila in 1976. You thus finished ahead of the World champion. I wasn't expecting to perform well in that tournament. I will never forget that game against Karpov. I had black pieces and I played Sicilian Defence. It was the Richter-Rauzer variation and Karpov played the Qe1 variation. And I was able to look at it before our game. You then became the first Asian to qualify for the Candidates in 1983. That tournament featured the likes of Garry Kasparov, Vasily Smyslov and Viktor Korchnoi. Yes, that is one of the achievements close to my heart. I qualified for the Candidates from the 1982 Interzonals held at Toluca, Mexico. But I lost in the quarterfinals to Zoltan Ribli. Then I had again a chance to qualify for the Candidates in 1985, but missed it narrowly, by half-a-point, in fact. At the Baku Chess Olympiad in 2016, you won bronze on the third board. Not a bad show for a 65-year-old. My first Olympiad was in 1970 and the only one I missed after that was in 2008, when I was appointed the head coach. You won individual medals before 2016, too. The silver on the top board in the 1974 Olympiad at Nice must have been special, for you completed your final GM norm .I played 19 rounds and was unbeaten. I won nine games and drew 10. And there were some strong players I met, such as Viktor Korchnoi, Vlastimil Hort and Lothar Schmid. You were one of the few chess players to get close to the most influential chess player of all time — Bobby Fischer. You even worked as his second for his unofficial world championship rematch against Boris Spassky in 1992. I admire Fischer. He was our guest in 1968. He played with some of our top players in the Philippines. And I was just a little boy. I was watching, because he was already my idol. I did not have a chance to meet him then. The next time he was invited, in 1973, I had a small chat with him. He was making the opening moves with our president, Ferdinand Marcos. In 1976, I became closer to him. He was again a guest of Mr. Campomanes, who was then trying to promote a match between Karpov and Fischer outside of FIDE, but it did not materialise. For 20 years, Bobby did not play until 1992. He was a special champion, and he had many demands. Like a special boy, he needed special care. In the 1972 World title match against Spassky, he made some strange demands, and got the chair changed. And then he forfeited the second game. But he still won. What do you think are Fischer's biggest contributions to chess? He made chess very popular. And the 1972 match was on the front pages of all the international newspapers, and that had never happened with chess. I would even go to IBM, because I knew somebody from IBM, and you could get the moves of the game from Reykjavik right away. How do you look back at working with Fischer for the 1992 match in Yugoslavia? We would look at some openings, but he would not play it on that day. He would play it maybe after three weeks. You know the match took three months, over 30 games [Fischer won 10-5]. He called me early in the morning one day because the organiser was already pressing him to finish the match. He had won nine games and needed only one more. The organiser told him he was spending every day something like $20,000, for the hotel and all that. This was Game 30 and I was surprised when he called and said, 'Come here, come here'. His room was very dark. He had this little pocket chess set and told me he was thinking of the Samisch variation of the King's Indian Defence. And Spassky also played it. Up to move 10. Nb3, the game went exactly according to what we planned Your memories of playing against Anand, Asia's first World champion. I played him in 1986 at the Asian team championship. Somehow I played great chess and won, but I saw he was a great talent. He beat me in our next meeting, in Manila. When he became the World champion for the first time, in 2000, I was very happy. It was not just India, but Asia was happy.
CNN
17-02-2025
- Sport
- CNN
Kasparov, Karpov and the KGB? 40 years on from the most controversial chess match of all time
Russian-born chess grandmaster and émigré Gennadi 'Genna' Sosonko still remembers where he was 40 years ago today, when he heard that the 1984-85 World Championship match in Moscow between Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov had been abandoned. 'I couldn't come to the Soviet Union, of course. I was an enemy as (far as they were) concerned,' he says in an interview with CNN Sport. 'I remember that day very well because I was in Switzerland, and I was together with (dissident and fellow grandmaster) Viktor Korchnoi, helping him to prepare for one of his own matches. We were listening to the Swiss radio, we were analyzing the opposition, when we heard that (FIDE President Florencio) Campomanes stopped the match. 'Well, well, well, how is this possible?'' The match had lasted five months, longer than any other World Championship before or since. Somewhere along the way, the contest had picked up some sort of symbolic value, an understanding that the result would reflect the future of the Soviet Union as a whole. If Karpov won, it would be a sign of life for the old guard in a country which seemed to be slipping towards inevitable dissolution. If Kasparov won, it would be confirmation that times were changing, that something fresh and exciting and terrifying was coming. But to be abandoned, without a winner, after 48 grueling games? What did that mean? In terms of popularity, chess in the Soviet Union was akin to the NFL in the US. 'It was more than just a kind of sport,' says Sosonko. 'Chess in Russia was a kind of religion. It was much more than just a game with 64 squares and 32 pieces. 'The names of Karpov, the names of (Mikhail) Tal, (Tigran) Petrosian and others were known by everybody, even the people who never played chess.' The dominance enjoyed by Soviet players during the second half of the 20th century is hard to overstate. FIDE organized its first World Championship in 1948, and from then until the end of the century, 23 championship matches were played. Only one was not won by a Soviet or former-Soviet citizen – Bobby Fischer in 1972. Under the likes of Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov, the Soviet Union was well-known for its extensive use of propaganda, including the promotion of elite sportspeople like ice hockey star Vladislav Tretiak and soccer goalkeeper Lev Yashin. With the Cold War bubbling away and the USSR looking for any opportunity to promote Soviet ideals on the world stage, chess players were no different. Their supremacy in the sport was fueled, in part, by the fact that they were looked after exceptionally well by the state. 'The conditions for the players were such that you couldn't compare it with the tournaments in the West,' Sosonko recalls. 'They had carte blanche in all restaurants, all hotels, unbelievable fees in dollars and hard currency. It was absolutely phenomenal in the Soviet Union.' By the time 1984 came around, Karpov – a three-time world champion and a symbol of Soviet ideals – had been the prized asset for a decade. 'He was a really Russian guy from Ural, and he represented our country with glamor, with everything and so on,' explains Sosonko. 'He was a god in Russia.' As one of the few Soviet players who was able to play tournaments abroad and collect prize money in the local currency, Karpov was also 'one of the richest people in the country,' according to Sosonko. 'He was one of the three or maybe four people in all of the Soviet Union who got a Mercedes car. One was Brezhnev, (singer Vladimir) Vysotsky, and the third one was Anatoly Karpov. 'The privileges that he got, you cannot imagine. He couldn't compare with anybody in Russia.' Even at that time in the Soviet Union, everybody knew that Kasparov was young, ambitious. Not a dissident, but someone who was representative of the new wave.' Gennadi "Genna" Sosonko, Russian-born chess grandmaster Kasparov, on the other hand, could not have been viewed more differently. 'He had a couple of weaknesses in the eyes of the big Party guys and the sport committee,' says Sosonko. 'Namely, he was not a Russian, he was half-Jew and half-Armenian, and he came from Baku. The Soviet Union was very antisemitic.' Despite having some ties to the Azerbaijani Communist Party's First Secretary – and future president of Azerbaijan – Heydar Aliyev, the young challenger was not nearly as loyal to the Party as Karpov. 'Even at that time in the Soviet Union, everybody knew that Kasparov was young, ambitious. Not a dissident, but someone who was representative of the new wave,' says Sosonko. 'His friends were actors, not dissidents – however, dissidents as well – but people who were not for the regime. (Whereas) Karpov was a really hard guard of the Soviet society at that time.' Karpov's conservatism and Kasparov's radical nature were both present in their chess. 'There was something of a clash of titans here, in stylistic view,' Andrew Soltis, American grandmaster and chess historian, tells CNN Sport. 'Kasparov represented a more aggressive, dynamic style. 'He was a contrast with Karpov, who was somewhat more conservative. He played a waiting game often. He specialized in improving his position gradually until it became overwhelming. Karpov rarely won a game in fewer than 30 moves. Kasparov reveled in winning games very quickly. 'No one was indifferent. You were either a Karpov fan or a Kasparov fan. There was no middle ground.' Played under the competition's old rules, where the champion is the first to win six games and draws are worth nothing, the 1984 World Chess Championship began on September 10. Nine games and 25 days in, Karpov had established a seemingly unassailable 4-0 lead. As Kasparov began to get more of a handle on the match, the next 17 games were drawn, before Karpov won again in game 27 to put himself one win away from victory. But the champion was not playing like he had been at the start of the match. He had started to make mistakes and, in game 32, Kasparov finally notched a victory. 'Karpov thought that he could win the match just by sitting back and waiting for his opponent to blunder, and that may have worked at the beginning, but Kasparov recovered remarkably. He didn't emotionally collapse the way many of Karpov's opponents did,' explains Soltis. 'Eventually, the strain got to Karpov and he began to make really bad moves. He became unnerved.' The next 14 games were tied, but in games 47 and 48, Kasparov won two in a row to pull the score back to 5-3. Suddenly, Karpov was floundering. Was his opponent really about to come back and win the match? 'Definitely, the momentum had shifted to Kasparov,' says Soltis. 'I think he would probably have at least gotten to a situation where they both had five victories. And the final, if that happened, I would have bet heavily on Kasparov. I think that Karpov had become a shell of the player that he once was. 'The Karpov that began that match in 1984 was not the Karpov that ended the match in 1985.' The intensity of the situation was apparently getting to the reigning champion, who lost 22 pounds over the course of the match. 'Karpov was obviously getting very tired. He was exhausted. He wasn't sleeping well. According to his aides, he was getting to sleep at midnight early in the match, and then it was 2 a.m. and then it was 4 a.m. He was clearly getting weaker and weaker,' says Soltis. '(He) wasn't very heavy to begin with. He's a small guy, relatively, and he was just wasting away.' It was at this point, with Kasparov apparently having turned the tide and both players keen to continue, that Campomanes took one of the most infamous decisions in chess history. He flew to Moscow and, citing the health of the players, announced that he was abandoning the match. The ruling, he added, was supported by the Soviet Chess Federation. In the 40 years since, there has never been a definitive answer as to whether Campomanes – who has since been referred to as 'Karpovmanes' in some circles – had any ulterior motive when he made the decision. In Sosonko's mind, the reasoning is clear. 'FIDE, the international chess organization, was completely under the influence of the Soviet Union,' he says. 'We knew, of course, that Campomanes was on the side of the Soviets.' When contacted for comment, current FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky told CNN that Sosonko's claims were 'rather inaccurate.' While admitting that the Soviets did have a lot of influence, he pointed out that there was a lot of tension between FIDE and the USSR Chess Federation, particularly between 1983 and 1985. There was this invisible hand that was benefiting Karpov.' Andy Soltis, American grandmaster and chess historian There have even been suggestions from some that Campomanes, who passed away in 2010, was an agent of the KGB, an argument Sosonko believes is an oversimplification. ''KGB agent' is a hard definition – that he got some money or some instructions. I don't think so. But he was on the Soviet side, in all aspects,' he says. Soltis points out that Campomanes had previously taken decisions in other tournaments that had hindered Soviet players and calls the notion that Campomanes was KGB 'absurd.' However, he does also believe that decisions throughout the match seemed to favor Karpov. 'The postponements, I think, were the critical point here,' he explains. 'Normally, players can ask for a postponement of a game in those days because of illness, and the players had exhausted their number of days they could take. And then there were these mysterious postponements that the government or the chess officials ordered. 'There was no real explanation. So there was this invisible hand that was benefiting Karpov.' There was, recalls Soltis, a shift in the FIDE President's reputation during the match: 'At one point, it seemed like Campomanes was standing firm, that he was an enemy of the Soviets. 'But during this match, the perception changed, and it would seem that Campomanes was actually playing a double game. He was really helping Karpov, he was helping the Soviet Chess Federation which really wanted to get this thing over with, and he was trying to find a solution. 'Nobody knows what's going on in Campomanes' mind, and he's dead now, so he'll never tell.' While the answer to this specific question is likely to be lost to history, what has happened since will inevitably inform how 1984-85 is viewed. Kasparov won the rematch later that year, then beat Karpov again in each of the next three World Championships, and is now known as one of the greatest players ever. Perhaps even more crucially though, present-day Russia is using sports to promote its interests throughout the world. 'I think the Russians are trying to use sports as a political weapon. I think that's definitely true: a leopard can't change its spots,' says Soltis. '(Russian President Vladimir) Putin is, well, a former KGB agent,' he continues. 'Nowadays, with the sports boycott of the Russians, they're in a very difficult position, and they're trying to claw their way back into chess, and into sports in general. '(In the Soviet Union) they were using sports and chess which, of course, is considered a sport in Russia and always will be, for their own benefit. And I suspect you're going to see this for many years to come.'
CNN
15-02-2025
- Sport
- CNN
Kasparov, Karpov and the KGB? 40 years on from the most controversial chess match of all time
Russian-born chess grandmaster and émigré Gennadi 'Genna' Sosonko still remembers where he was 40 years ago today, when he heard that the 1984-85 World Championship match in Moscow between Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov had been abandoned. 'I couldn't come to the Soviet Union, of course. I was an enemy as (far as they were) concerned,' he says in an interview with CNN Sport. 'I remember that day very well because I was in Switzerland, and I was together with (dissident and fellow grandmaster) Viktor Korchnoi, helping him to prepare for one of his own matches. We were listening to the Swiss radio, we were analyzing the opposition, when we heard that (FIDE President Florencio) Campomanes stopped the match. 'Well, well, well, how is this possible?'' The match had lasted five months, longer than any other World Championship before or since. Somewhere along the way, the contest had picked up some sort of symbolic value, an understanding that the result would reflect the future of the Soviet Union as a whole. If Karpov won, it would be a sign of life for the old guard in a country which seemed to be slipping towards inevitable dissolution. If Kasparov won, it would be confirmation that times were changing, that something fresh and exciting and terrifying was coming. But to be abandoned, without a winner, after 48 grueling games? What did that mean? In terms of popularity, chess in the Soviet Union was akin to the NFL in the US. 'It was more than just a kind of sport,' says Sosonko. 'Chess in Russia was a kind of religion. It was much more than just a game with 64 squares and 32 pieces. 'The names of Karpov, the names of (Mikhail) Tal, (Tigran) Petrosian and others were known by everybody, even the people who never played chess.' The dominance enjoyed by Soviet players during the second half of the 20th century is hard to overstate. FIDE organized its first World Championship in 1948, and from then until the end of the century, 23 championship matches were played. Only one was not won by a Soviet or former-Soviet citizen – Bobby Fischer in 1972. Under the likes of Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov, the Soviet Union was well-known for its extensive use of propaganda, including the promotion of elite sportspeople like ice hockey star Vladislav Tretiak and soccer goalkeeper Lev Yashin. With the Cold War bubbling away and the USSR looking for any opportunity to promote Soviet ideals on the world stage, chess players were no different. Their supremacy in the sport was fueled, in part, by the fact that they were looked after exceptionally well by the state. 'The conditions for the players were such that you couldn't compare it with the tournaments in the West,' Sosonko recalls. 'They had carte blanche in all restaurants, all hotels, unbelievable fees in dollars and hard currency. It was absolutely phenomenal in the Soviet Union.' By the time 1984 came around, Karpov – a three-time world champion and a symbol of Soviet ideals – had been the prized asset for a decade. 'He was a really Russian guy from Ural, and he represented our country with glamor, with everything and so on,' explains Sosonko. 'He was a god in Russia.' As one of the few Soviet players who was able to play tournaments abroad and collect prize money in the local currency, Karpov was also 'one of the richest people in the country,' according to Sosonko. 'He was one of the three or maybe four people in all of the Soviet Union who got a Mercedes car. One was Brezhnev, (singer Vladimir) Vysotsky, and the third one was Anatoly Karpov. 'The privileges that he got, you cannot imagine. He couldn't compare with anybody in Russia.' Even at that time in the Soviet Union, everybody knew that Kasparov was young, ambitious. Not a dissident, but someone who was representative of the new wave.' Gennadi "Genna" Sosonko, Russian-born chess grandmaster Kasparov, on the other hand, could not have been viewed more differently. 'He had a couple of weaknesses in the eyes of the big Party guys and the sport committee,' says Sosonko. 'Namely, he was not a Russian, he was half-Jew and half-Armenian, and he came from Baku. The Soviet Union was very antisemitic.' Despite having some ties to the Azerbaijani Communist Party's First Secretary – and future president of Azerbaijan – Heydar Aliyev, the young challenger was not nearly as loyal to the Party as Karpov. 'Even at that time in the Soviet Union, everybody knew that Kasparov was young, ambitious. Not a dissident, but someone who was representative of the new wave,' says Sosonko. 'His friends were actors, not dissidents – however, dissidents as well – but people who were not for the regime. (Whereas) Karpov was a really hard guard of the Soviet society at that time.' Karpov's conservatism and Kasparov's radical nature were both present in their chess. 'There was something of a clash of titans here, in stylistic view,' Andrew Soltis, American grandmaster and chess historian, tells CNN Sport. 'Kasparov represented a more aggressive, dynamic style. 'He was a contrast with Karpov, who was somewhat more conservative. He played a waiting game often. He specialized in improving his position gradually until it became overwhelming. Karpov rarely won a game in fewer than 30 moves. Kasparov reveled in winning games very quickly. 'No one was indifferent. You were either a Karpov fan or a Kasparov fan. There was no middle ground.' Played under the competition's old rules, where the champion is the first to win six games and draws are worth nothing, the 1984 World Chess Championship began on September 10. Nine games and 25 days in, Karpov had established a seemingly unassailable 4-0 lead. As Kasparov began to get more of a handle on the match, the next 17 games were drawn, before Karpov won again in game 27 to put himself one win away from victory. But the champion was not playing like he had been at the start of the match. He had started to make mistakes and, in game 32, Kasparov finally notched a victory. 'Karpov thought that he could win the match just by sitting back and waiting for his opponent to blunder, and that may have worked at the beginning, but Kasparov recovered remarkably. He didn't emotionally collapse the way many of Karpov's opponents did,' explains Soltis. 'Eventually, the strain got to Karpov and he began to make really bad moves. He became unnerved.' The next 14 games were tied, but in games 47 and 48, Kasparov won two in a row to pull the score back to 5-3. Suddenly, Karpov was floundering. Was his opponent really about to come back and win the match? 'Definitely, the momentum had shifted to Kasparov,' says Soltis. 'I think he would probably have at least gotten to a situation where they both had five victories. And the final, if that happened, I would have bet heavily on Kasparov. I think that Karpov had become a shell of the player that he once was. 'The Karpov that began that match in 1984 was not the Karpov that ended the match in 1985.' The intensity of the situation was apparently getting to the reigning champion, who lost 22 pounds over the course of the match. 'Karpov was obviously getting very tired. He was exhausted. He wasn't sleeping well. According to his aides, he was getting to sleep at midnight early in the match, and then it was 2 a.m. and then it was 4 a.m. He was clearly getting weaker and weaker,' says Soltis. '(He) wasn't very heavy to begin with. He's a small guy, relatively, and he was just wasting away.' It was at this point, with Kasparov apparently having turned the tide and both players keen to continue, that Campomanes took one of the most infamous decisions in chess history. He flew to Moscow and, citing the health of the players, announced that he was abandoning the match. The ruling, he added, was supported by the Soviet Chess Federation. In the 40 years since, there has never been a definitive answer as to whether Campomanes – who has since been referred to as 'Karpovmanes' in some circles – had any ulterior motive when he made the decision. In Sosonko's mind, the reasoning is clear. 'FIDE, the international chess organization, was completely under the influence of the Soviet Union,' he says. 'We knew, of course, that Campomanes was on the side of the Soviets.' When contacted for comment, current FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky told CNN that Sosonko's claims were 'rather inaccurate.' While admitting that the Soviets did have a lot of influence, he pointed out that there was a lot of tension between FIDE and the USSR Chess Federation, particularly between 1983 and 1985. There was this invisible hand that was benefiting Karpov.' Andy Soltis, American grandmaster and chess historian There have even been suggestions from some that Campomanes, who passed away in 2010, was an agent of the KGB, an argument Sosonko believes is an oversimplification. ''KGB agent' is a hard definition – that he got some money or some instructions. I don't think so. But he was on the Soviet side, in all aspects,' he says. Soltis points out that Campomanes had previously taken decisions in other tournaments that had hindered Soviet players and calls the notion that Campomanes was KGB 'absurd.' However, he does also believe that decisions throughout the match seemed to favor Karpov. 'The postponements, I think, were the critical point here,' he explains. 'Normally, players can ask for a postponement of a game in those days because of illness, and the players had exhausted their number of days they could take. And then there were these mysterious postponements that the government or the chess officials ordered. 'There was no real explanation. So there was this invisible hand that was benefiting Karpov.' There was, recalls Soltis, a shift in the FIDE President's reputation during the match: 'At one point, it seemed like Campomanes was standing firm, that he was an enemy of the Soviets. 'But during this match, the perception changed, and it would seem that Campomanes was actually playing a double game. He was really helping Karpov, he was helping the Soviet Chess Federation which really wanted to get this thing over with, and he was trying to find a solution. 'Nobody knows what's going on in Campomanes' mind, and he's dead now, so he'll never tell.' While the answer to this specific question is likely to be lost to history, what has happened since will inevitably inform how 1984-85 is viewed. Kasparov won the rematch later that year, then beat Karpov again in each of the next three World Championships, and is now known as one of the greatest players ever. Perhaps even more crucially though, present-day Russia is using sports to promote its interests throughout the world. 'I think the Russians are trying to use sports as a political weapon. I think that's definitely true: a leopard can't change its spots,' says Soltis. '(Russian President Vladimir) Putin is, well, a former KGB agent,' he continues. 'Nowadays, with the sports boycott of the Russians, they're in a very difficult position, and they're trying to claw their way back into chess, and into sports in general. '(In the Soviet Union) they were using sports and chess which, of course, is considered a sport in Russia and always will be, for their own benefit. And I suspect you're going to see this for many years to come.'
