The Chess Mind

After three weeks of insanity, we'll calm down a bit and take a look at a masterpiece by the arguably second greatest player of all time (at least through, say, the mid-90s). Karpov's style was, and continues to be, one of "active prophylaxis": like Petrosian, he is a genius at sniffing out and snuffing out his opponent's active ideas well in advance, but unlike Petrosian, he will generate active play on his own. This dual ability made him dominant over the rest of the world (except for Kasparov, of course) for an extremely impressive 20 year period.

For this week's show, then, we'll take a look at a beautiful illustration of his style in action, from his game with then up-and-coming GM Artur Yusupov ("Jussupow" in your ChessBase databases). Yusupov played the very active Open Ruy with Black, and was always a move or so away from proving full equality in the middlegame. Karpov had some slight pressure along the b- and c-files, but if Yusupov could just plug up the queenside gaps with ...Na5-c4, then all would be well.

Karpov, needless to say, did not let this happen! To see how he prevented it, and to fully understand how he did so, is to obtain a small glimpse into his art, and to deepen our own feeling for the game. What's also very interesting about Karpov's creative achievement in foiling Black's plan is its psychological effect. After 10 moves of preventing his ideas, Yusupov grew so flustered that although his position was only a bit worse by this point, he became overanxious to get some play, somewhere, and blundered a pawn. Having burned his bridges, Yusupov then launched a desperate attack on the White king. It failed, but Karpov had to play bravely and accurately to prove it - and Karpov's brave king walk adds to the luster of the game as well.

The game is a minor classic, and well worth examining for the opening, too - the Open Ruy is an important and very lively variation, one which I think many amateurs would do well to take up.

So I hope my readers will join me Monday night (9 p.m. ET): as always, directions for watching the show live (or afterwards, watching it or any of my other past shows in the archives) can be found here, while a list of games covered in previous shows can be found here. See you then!