Tweet
Karpov vs Timman Again
Oct 6, 2016
The fourth international chess tournament Basamro will take place in Murmansk 6-9 October 2016. Anatoly Karpov and Jan Timman will play a friendly match as part of the festival. The games will take place in Chimney hall of hotel Park Inn Murmansk.
The match will consist of 4 classical games with time control 2h for the first 40 moves and 30 min addition for the rest of the game. So far Karpov and Timman have played 99 games, the 100th encounter between the two will be in the Basamro festival in Murmansk.
http://www.chessdom.com/karpov-vs-timman-live/
________
Timman’s Titans – My World Chess Champions, a 330-page book by Jan Timman, has just been published.
It has sections on the World Champions from Max Euwe to Garry Kasparov.
Here, he speaks of his first meeting with Karpov:
In December 1967, when I had just turned 16, I played him for the first time in Groningen. Karpov, who was six months older than me, had travelled to the Netherlands alone. In those days, such a thing was highly unusual. The young sport hero, who would be holding the Soviet colours high was always accompanied by an experienced attendant. Decades later Karpov still didn’t know why he had been sent out on his own. He thought that the Sports committee might just have wanted to save money. From the airport, Karpov took the train to Groningen. He probably would have made it to Hotel Terminus Noord anyway, but chance had it that he met Berry Withhuis, the press officer of the tournament, on the train in Amersfoort. After than, nothing could go wrong.
In the Final group in Groningen, I started with 3 out of 3. Karpov had half a point less. The 4th round was crucial: he defeated me with white. Afterwards he said in an interview that he had been nervous before the game. Karpov won the tournament convincingly. However, I remember that at the time the experts thought that Mikhail Steinberg, who had won the even in the previous year was stronger. Steinberg, who was one year younger, had achieved a higher score, and he had played very sharply in every game. Karpov’s play was mainly characterized by soundness. People didn’t realize that it was precisely this characteristic that signified great promise for the future. Probably the chess authorities in the Soviet Union didn’t realize this either at the time. Steinberg was the one who was assigned the strong grandmaster Anatoly Lutikov as his attendant, which was a clear sign that they wanted to invest in him. There was never much competition between Karpov and Steinberg later on. Their mutual score was 5-1 for Karpov, with 2 draws. Steinberg’s career ended abruptly when he contracted leukemia and he died at 24.
A nice long essay on Bobby Fischer in that book too.
Oct 6, 2016
The fourth international chess tournament Basamro will take place in Murmansk 6-9 October 2016. Anatoly Karpov and Jan Timman will play a friendly match as part of the festival. The games will take place in Chimney hall of hotel Park Inn Murmansk.
The match will consist of 4 classical games with time control 2h for the first 40 moves and 30 min addition for the rest of the game. So far Karpov and Timman have played 99 games, the 100th encounter between the two will be in the Basamro festival in Murmansk.
http://www.chessdom.com/karpov-vs-timman-live/
________
Timman’s Titans – My World Chess Champions, a 330-page book by Jan Timman, has just been published.
It has sections on the World Champions from Max Euwe to Garry Kasparov.
Here, he speaks of his first meeting with Karpov:
In December 1967, when I had just turned 16, I played him for the first time in Groningen. Karpov, who was six months older than me, had travelled to the Netherlands alone. In those days, such a thing was highly unusual. The young sport hero, who would be holding the Soviet colours high was always accompanied by an experienced attendant. Decades later Karpov still didn’t know why he had been sent out on his own. He thought that the Sports committee might just have wanted to save money. From the airport, Karpov took the train to Groningen. He probably would have made it to Hotel Terminus Noord anyway, but chance had it that he met Berry Withhuis, the press officer of the tournament, on the train in Amersfoort. After than, nothing could go wrong.
In the Final group in Groningen, I started with 3 out of 3. Karpov had half a point less. The 4th round was crucial: he defeated me with white. Afterwards he said in an interview that he had been nervous before the game. Karpov won the tournament convincingly. However, I remember that at the time the experts thought that Mikhail Steinberg, who had won the even in the previous year was stronger. Steinberg, who was one year younger, had achieved a higher score, and he had played very sharply in every game. Karpov’s play was mainly characterized by soundness. People didn’t realize that it was precisely this characteristic that signified great promise for the future. Probably the chess authorities in the Soviet Union didn’t realize this either at the time. Steinberg was the one who was assigned the strong grandmaster Anatoly Lutikov as his attendant, which was a clear sign that they wanted to invest in him. There was never much competition between Karpov and Steinberg later on. Their mutual score was 5-1 for Karpov, with 2 draws. Steinberg’s career ended abruptly when he contracted leukemia and he died at 24.
A nice long essay on Bobby Fischer in that book too.
Comment