Checkmate in Baguio: The Cold War Chess Duel Between Karpov and Korchnoi

On the first of October 1975, two giants clashed in the boxing ring in the Philippines – world champion Muhammad Ali and challenger Joe Frazier. It was one of the most spectacular fights in history and Ali’s swansong. Three years later, another clash of giants was staged in the Philippines. This time, the blows fell behind the chessboard. Especially the low blows. The world championship title was contested between the champion Anatoly Karpov, the golden boy of Soviet chess, and the challenger Viktor Korchnoi, an eccentric Leningrad man who had defected to the West two years earlier. The Kremlin was on tenterhooks. A victory for the traitor would have been a severe blow to the country’s intellectual reputation. In the Soviet Union, chess was never just chess …

All means were allowed to win. The duel was marked by incidents and bizarre ploys on both sides, including parapsychology, political pressure and – fruit yoghurt.

Viktor the Terrible

The Karpov-Korchnoi duel has an interesting pre-history, which began in 1972, when another eccentric, Bobby Fischer, defeated Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, ending a quarter of a century of Soviet domination of the King’s Game. Two years later, a Candidates’ Tournament was held in Moscow, where the strongest chess players fought for the right to challenge America’s mad genius. In the fierce competition, the young Anatoly Karpov, who was taking part in the Candidates’ Tournament for the first time ever, surprisingly won. In the final, he narrowly beat – Viktor Korchnoi. The Leningrad man was furious, convinced that the Soviet regime was throwing stones at his feet because, unlike the model citizen Karpov, he was too free-thinking and autocratic.

Karpov then turned from a sporting rival into a personal enemy. This was in line with Korchnoi’s perception of the world. He had no life beyond chess, and behind the chessboard sat not opponents but enemies who had to be ground into dust.

Bobby Fischer subsequently became embroiled in a dispute with the World Chess Organisation (FIDE) and never took part in any tournament under its auspices again. This meant that the 1975 World Championship match was off and the new king automatically became the untried challenger to Karpov. It went down many people’s noses that he became the official best without having to dethrone the actual champion and the most talented chess player in history – none more so than Viktor Korchnoi.

Korchnoi was a member of the generation that experienced the worst horrors of the Second World War. He knew hunger and fear, having spent his childhood in besieged Leningrad. His friends say that this is what made him a relentless fighter. His defiant character and sharp tongue earned him the nickname Viktor the Terrible.

He was a perfectionist and a workaholic, a chess obsessive. By his own admission, he was not a boy prodigy, but a workaholic. He never understood colleagues going to the theatre or on holiday. He played chess from the age of five and won everything there was to win – except the title of world champion.

When he lost to Karpov in a candidates’ tournament in Moscow, he realised that he would never succeed in his homeland, because he was fighting not only against an opponent for the chess board, but against the Soviet regime. Karpov won because that was what the “top brass” decided. He was also lucky. He said as much in an interview with Tanjug and, predictably, incurred the regime’s wrath.

In 1976, during a tournament in Amsterdam, he drove into a police station and asked for political asylum. Korchnoi was not interested in politics, he just wanted to play chess – by his own rules. Since he was not allowed to do so in his homeland, where everything was on the young Karpov, he simply left, leaving his wife and son behind the Iron Curtain. At the time, he was one of the best chess players in the world, but the Soviet Union had a new weapon ready.

Tolya

Anatoly Karpov was twenty years younger than Korchnoi and a child of the post-war, post-Stalin Soviet Union. He and his rival could not have been more different. Tolya, as he was affectionately called, was a quiet and shy young man from a provincial town in the Urals, where cross-country skiing was the most popular sport. He started playing chess at the age of four and by the age of nineteen he was already a grandmaster. It was clear that he was going to become a great chess player.

Unlike Korchnoi, he was a natural talent with a great sense of the game. Experts compared him to a machine, because he made no mistakes and could punish any weakness of his opponent. His play was careful and deliberate – like his character.

There was no doubt that as a young man he was one of the best, perhaps even the best chess player in the world. Even his colleagues, who accused him of being the regime’s darling, a conformist and a careerist, admitted it. He was also the darling of the proletarian masses, one of the biggest stars in the Soviet Union. On the other hand, it has to be admitted that his loyalty would not have helped him at all if he had not been an excellent chess player.

Korchnoi was right when he claimed that Karpov was privileged by the authorities. He was a model citizen, a brilliant chess player and, not insignificantly, in the prime of his youth. Soviet chess experts estimated that he would have stood a much better chance against Fischer than the unpredictable Korchnoi.

As we know, this duel never took place, as the American was already dealing with his demons at the time, and the chess crown fell into Karpov’s lap. He was world champion for three years, winning almost every tournament he entered during that time. But his greatest challenge came in 1978, when he had to defend his title under FIDE rules.

At this point Korchnoi reappears in the story, having waited three years for his chance for revenge. Before that, he had to secure a ticket to the Candidates’ Tournament. He did it with flying colours. He defeated three of the best Soviet chess players, including two former world champions, and won the right to challenge his sworn enemy. Viktor the Terrible was in great form.

Cold war in the tropics

The world title fight began on 18 July 1978 in Baguio, Philippines. The sponsors were Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, the infamous couple who had ruled the country for more than twenty years. The popularity of chess at that time is revealed, among other things, by the size of the prize fund: the winner will pocket more than $350 000, the loser $150 000. Bjorn Borg, an icon of world sport, received £19,000 for winning Wimbledon that same month.

The Karpov-Korchnoi match was much more than a sporting event. Not only were the two former friends, with diametrically opposed characters and playing styles, standing opposite each other, which was interesting in itself, but the ideological prestige of the Soviet Union was at stake.

Six years ago, the individualist Fischer triumphed in Reykjavik, and it could have been worse in the Philippines. A defector, a traitor to his homeland, could have taken the crown. The chess superpower could not afford to slip up. On the 27-year-old Tolya fell a huge responsibility.

Viktor, who was fighting for his own glory, was also under enormous pressure. He knew that this might be his last chance to win the crown. He had never been so motivated in his life. He was fighting against Tolya and at the same time against Brezhnev, communism and everything that goes with it. He had the whole West on his back, where the memory of Fischer’s legendary feat was still very much alive. The Cold War was raging in the Philippines too.

Chess is an individual sport, but a top chess player cannot be successful without a good team. Karpov was accompanied by a delegation of 20, including doctors, psychologists, security guards, former world champion Mikhail Talj and several other excellent chess players. Karpov also had a personal chef. There were no shortage of KGB agents, of course.

The head of the delegation, Viktor Baturinsky, himself a good chess player, was a very interesting personality. He had the largest chess library in the world and was President of the Soviet Chess Federation. In Stalin’s time, he worked as a military prosecutor, but in his old age he transferred to the KGB. Chess was a deadly serious business in the Soviet Union.

Korchnoi’s team was much more modest. The head of the delegation was Petra Leuweerik, a fervent Austrian anti-communist who spent ten years in a Siberian gulag for trying to blow up a train in the Soviet occupation zone in Vienna. She and Viktor met in Switzerland, when he had already emigrated, and later married. She was his manager, secretary, security guard and more.

Korchnoi was assisted by two young British analysts and a few other experts, but they looked like amateurs compared to Karpov’s heavyweights.

A game of nerves

The first scandal broke out before the two competitors had even sat down at the chessboard. The Soviets lodged a complaint with FIDE, saying that Korchnoi should not have played under the Swiss flag. He was living in Switzerland at the time, but was not a Swiss citizen. In fact, he was officially apatrid, homeless. He had changed three countries in two years, and none of them offered him citizenship, and he was stripped of it in his home country.

The Korchnoi delegation jokingly suggested that Viktor could use a pirate flag or a Soviet flag with the words “I have escaped!”. FIDE decided, in a Solomonic decision, that the two competitors would not have flags on the table, and only the flags of the Philippines, FIDE and the NW would be flown in the hall. The game of nerves began.

Even at the first press conference it was immediately clear that it would not be without politics. Karpov was as diplomatic as ever and avoided political topics. Korchnoi had no such reservations. He complained about suspicious members of Karpov’s delegation and claimed that if he won, the KGB would liquidate him. No one took this seriously.

Much more serious was the letter which he then read. In it, he asked Brezhnev to allow his family to leave the prison-Soviet Union and, in passing, described Karpov as a prisoner. The Secretary-General did not take pity on him at the time, and Bella and Igor Korchnoi were only able to leave for the West a few years later.

The duel should have started, but it stalled again. This time it was Korchnoi’s chair, which he had brought specially from Sweden and which cost several thousand dollars. The Soviets suspected that it contained “forbidden devices”. FIDE ordered the chair to be dismantled and X-rayed at a nearby hospital. There was no sign of any devices, and the conflict finally moved behind the chess board. Well, yes … Just before now, there was another unexpected complication.

The chess pieces were supposed to be too light. This was a common complaint and one of the few things both competitors agreed on. Just when it looked as if the start of the spectacle would have to be postponed, the organisers miraculously found a suitable chess set, which had to be transported from a town two hundred kilometres away on bumpy Philippine roads. The heavy chess pieces arrived in Baguio at just the right time – fifteen minutes before the first move.

A storm in a yoghurt jar

The draw determined that Korchnoi would start with the white pieces. The two rivals started very cautiously and drew amicably. The game, which was watched with interest even by the dictator Marcos, disappointed the chess connoisseurs. Korčno’s spectacles attracted much more attention. The old fox wore sunglasses with reflective glass that looked like a mirror. “Every time Viktor raised his head, I was blinded by the light of the countless reflectors hanging from the ceiling,” Karpov complained.

Judge Lothar Schmidt thought the fashion accessory was nothing special and Viktor continued to wear it happily.

Tolya, however, did not remain indebted to him. He used a rather funny, one might say childish trick – he started to twirl and swing. The chair provided by the organisers was comfortable, cushioned – Karpov was much shorter than Korchnoi – and swivellable. The spinning Karpov was stopped by the referee after a few games, after much grumbling from Korchnoi’s delegation.

Similar grips were commonplace in top chess. Any little thing that can throw the opponent off track is welcome. Psychological toughness, like fitness, is no less important than chess knowledge.

The second game was also marked by a bizarre incident. In the twenty-fifth move, Karpov was presented with a tray of purple yoghurt by the waiter. Supposedly it was blueberry yoghurt, but anyway, Korchnoi found the move suspicious. After the party, Petra Leuweerik, the head of his delegation, claimed that the yoghurt could have been some kind of coded message. It all seemed like a joke, but in the very next batch the matter escalated to absurd proportions.

The waiter brought Karpov a yoghurt again, this time in the seventeenth game, and the room erupted in laughter. Is the Soviet delegation using yoghurt to communicate with Karpov? If they bring it in the twenty-fifth move, it could mean “offer a draw”, and in the seventeenth move “play e4 e5” or something like that. Maybe the yoghurt contains stimulants, who knows. Korchnoi’s delegation lodged a complaint.

The yoghurt scandal was blown up by both sides to such an extent that FIDE had to lay down new rules for eating during the game. Karpov could eat yoghurt, but it had to be purple and it had to be brought to him at the same time. Poor referee Schmidt had to check that the yoghurt was not pink, blue or any other colour.

Speaking of cuisine, it should be mentioned that Korčnoj swore by caviar during the game. Iranian, not Russian, of course.

A below the belt punch

Once the storm in the yoghurt jar had subsided, five long and tense games followed without a winner. Six wins were on the line, no draws counted, and theoretically the match could have gone on indefinitely. Never in the history of the World Championships have two competitors drawn the first seven games.

The turning point came in early August in the next game, the eighth. This time, too, it was not without incident – Karpov refused to shake hands with Korchnoi before the start of the match. This was a serious breach of chess etiquette. Although more than forty years have passed since then, some chess players, especially those who have no sympathy for Karpov, are still appalled by this move.

Karpov justified his behaviour on the grounds that Korchnoi had grossly insulted members of his team. He also knew that Korchnoi plays much worse when he is angry, and Viktor Grozny was as furious as a lynx.

The below-the-belt punch achieved its purpose. Korchnoi was visibly nervous and played the eighth game so desperately that he had no chance. Karpov led 1 : 0 and psychologically the scales shifted in his favour.

After the end of the game, Korchnoi’s delegation suggested that in future they should simply abolish the handshake – at least that way Viktor would not have to wash his hands after the match. Michael Stean, Korchnoi’s British analyst, tried to calm the passions by sending a cigar to the Soviet delegation as a sign of peace. The next day, he received a parcel containing the same cigar and a bar of soap – the confrontation was just getting off to a good start.

The next ten games passed in Karpov’s character, the challenger losing contact with the champion, but it was no longer the fault of an unsporting move in the eighth game. Supernatural forces were at work.

Soviet parapsychology

Korchnoi complained that Karpov had a hypnotist in his ranks who was using the power of thought to sabotage his game. He was a middle-aged man who did nothing more than sit in the front row and stare at Korchnoi for the whole game. He was not interested in what was happening on the chessboard. For hours he sat motionless in silence, without taking his eyes off his challenger.

Korchnoi was so furious that he called a press conference and gave himself a hard time. He rambled on about thought waves, parapsychology and once again brought out the theory that his former compatriots were planning to liquidate him. The game of nerves was clearly taking its toll.

The alleged hypnotist was the mysterious Dr Vladimir Zuhar. He had a medical degree and was employed in the army. He had come to the Philippines on official duty. Many legends circulated about him, ranging from his being clairvoyant and telepathic to his being a practitioner of black magic.

Officially, he was a psychologist who was supposed to look after Karpov’s mental health. His field of work was sleep. Top chess players often suffer from insomnia due to psychological pressure and Dr Zuhar sang lullabies to Karpov for many years.

The champion admitted in his old age that Dr Zuhar was more of a poor sleep consultant than such experts say today. “Stop whispering in my ear, Vladimir, I’d better try to fall asleep myself,” he recalled.

In the old days, when he was still a Soviet citizen and a member of the Communist Party, Korchnoi also worked with Dr Zuhar. The hypnotist was also known in chess circles as a psychologist or psychotherapist.

Korchnoi was naturally not happy that a man who knew his childhood traumas was working with the enemy and staring at him like a man possessed during the most important game of his life. Dr Zuhar’s professional credentials and parapsychological abilities were irrelevant. All that mattered was that the alleged hypnotist had completely thrown poor Korčno off the track with his presence.

His delegation had countered the supernatural forces as best they knew how. Petra Leuweerik sat down behind Dr Zuhar in the hall and stabbed him in the back with a pencil. When that did not help, she began to pray Solzhenitsyn’s Archipelago of the Gulag in front of his nose, like praying garlic in front of a vampire’s nose. Endless meetings, complaints and fruitless negotiations followed.

For a while, the main character of this Philippine soap opera was Dr Zuhar. Since any parapsychological disturbance could not be demonstrated, the Korchnoi delegation had to be content with the fact that Dr Zuhar was forbidden to sit in the front row. Korčnoj, in return, gave up his sunglasses.

The antidote from the Orient

As it soon turned out, the all-powerful Dr Zuhar was able to send negative thought waves into Korčnoj’s already confused brain even from the seventh row. The challenger was trailing 4-1 in the nineteenth game – the match had already lasted two months by then – and no one in the history of World Championships had ever come back from such a deficit.

After each victory, Karpov’s personal chef had baked a cake with chocolate pieces on it, just like the last move of the game, and this time the champion was the first to have a piece with the white king on it. Defeat seemed inevitable and despondency reigned in Korčno’s camp.

Then the challenger made another in a series of unorthodox moves that had nothing to do with chess. Unable to get rid of the annoying hypnotist, he at least wanted to neutralise the negative vibrations he was sending out from his seat in the seventh row. He brought reinforcements to Baguio, which he apparently chose on the principle of a wedge being driven through a wedge.

First, he secured the services of a Filipino Jesuit who tried to turn the tide on the chessboard through the power of prayer, but the attempt was unsuccessful. When the power of Jesus’ Word failed, he turned to the tried and tested and even older Eastern spirituality. A young couple arrived in Baguio, dressed in long orange robes, and a new scandal was on the horizon.

They were American citizens Steven Dwyer and Victoria Shephard, better known as Dada and Didi. They were representatives of Ananda Marga, a spiritual-philosophical movement that emerged in India in the 1950s. Dada and Didi, both Harvard graduates, were involved in meditation and personal growth. They brought much-needed positive vibes into the hall, but their exotic appearance and inappropriate behaviour – they were seated in the lotus position – immediately drew the scorn of the godless Soviets.

“As soon as the yogis entered the hall, something happened to Dr Zuhar. He covered his face with a handkerchief and left the scene,” Korchnoi later wrote. Immediately afterwards, the entire Soviet delegation was chased out of the hall by positive vibrations.

The joy in Korchnoi’s camp lasted only a few days. As if the events in Baguio were not bizarre enough, it turned out that Dada and Didi were accused of the attempted murder of a diplomat at the Indian embassy in Manila. After posting bail, they were free to move around, but they were facing trial.

The Soviets complained that they posed a security threat and the organisers banned them from the courtroom. Immediately afterwards, Dr Zuhar returned to the seventh row and Korchnoi lost what little hair he had.

The return of the written-off

Didi and Dada then moved into Korchnoi’s villa, which for a while became a real Indian ashram. Viktor meditated and practised yoga every day, and even gave up meat at the urging of his American spiritual teachers. His team members, who had to work standing on their heads and listen to lectures on the miraculous power of the mind, were quite unhappy, but Viktor was convinced that his new approach would pay off sooner or later.

Karpov, meanwhile, was already 5-2 up and only a win away from the final success. The match was practically over, the deficit was too high. The Soviet delegation was so confident of final success that it even agreed that Dr Zuhar should not come into the hall again.

And then the Soviet machine jammed. The hypnotist probably had nothing to do with it, but who knew. Korchnoi won the twenty-eighth game and reduced the deficit to 5 : 3. A turnaround the likes of which the chess world had never seen before began.

Karpov later admitted that he had suffered a psychological collapse. He was tired and plagued by insomnia – apparently Dr Zuhar could not help him either. He also complained about the daily typhoons that raged across the Philippines for several weeks in a row. The champion was completely powerless against his reborn challenger and lost two more games.

The match was tied at 5 : 5 and Korchnoi suddenly became the favourite, while Karpov found himself under unprecedented pressure. When he should have won, his hand shook. At that time, storms must have been raging in the Kremlin too. Evil tongues said that Karpov was even thinking of defecting to the West. In his homeland, he would never have been forgiven for his defeat.

Before the decisive game, the champion tried to forget about chess for a moment and drove to nearby Manila, where the World Basketball Championship was underway. He watched the final between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, but perhaps it would have been better if he had stayed in the hotel – for it was the Swans who were victorious on the wings of Drazen Dalipagic. And after extra time.

Tensions are rising

Before the thirty-second game, with the score 5-5, the Soviet delegation realised that the devil had taken the joke. Korchnoi was on the attack, and a fiasco of unbelievable proportions was looming. Some strange events followed …

Just before the start of what could have been a decisive match, the first referee, the German Lothar Schmidt, unexpectedly resigned. He was replaced by Miroslav Filip from Czechoslovakia.

This unusual administrative reversal was greeted with great disapproval in Korčno’s camp. Not without reason. The Czechoslovakian immediately decided that Dr Zuhar could once again sit in the front row. To top it off, the Philippine organisers expelled Korčno’s guru from Baguio on the same day. Dada was later convicted of attempted murder and Didi was acquitted. The pressure on the challenger escalated, with the Soviets firing all guns.

In a way, this was a good sign for Korchnoi, as the opponent was clearly desperate. While Karpov asked for an adjournment of the thirty-second game – this was in accordance with the rules – Karpov, in a relaxed atmosphere, showed the journalists his yogic skills, including a headstand.

Experts predicted that the chess world would have a new champion. Karpov was exhausted, on the defensive and under much more pressure than his challenger. The champion was groggy, to borrow a boxing term.

Actually, the tactics Korchnoi had to adopt were quite simple. He won three of the last four games and the psychological advantage was on his side. On top of that, he was in better physical condition than his rival twenty years younger. Korchnoi should have played prudently, exhausting his opponent and waiting for his chance. This is how Karpov usually played.

A moment of truth

When the two rivals sat down at the chess board after twenty-one draws and three long months since the beginning of the duel, the tension reached its peak. The implacable dissident, aided by orange-robed gurus, took on the mighty Soviet Union. The challenger had waited three years for his chance and was one step away from the greatest victory of his life. Sporting, personal and ideological. It would be hard to imagine a more dramatic plot twist.

The champion started the duel with the white pieces and nothing special happened until the sixth move. Then the challenger made a fatal mistake. Viktor the Terrible transformed himself into Viktor the Hazarder. He did exactly what he should not have done – he made a very bold move.

He played the Pirce Defence, an opening named after the famous Slovenian Grandmaster and five-time Yugoslav champion, which he had never used before. He wanted to surprise his opponent and strike the death blow. He decided to go all or nothing. He could lurk for a mistake and then hit with all his strength. He could have settled for a draw and attacked his exhausted opponent in the next game, when he would play with the white pieces. He did neither, betrayed by passion and an overwhelming desire to win.

Tolya showed a champion’s instinct and did not cower under pressure. On the contrary, he counter-attacked and squeezed Viktor against the ropes, to use a boxing analogy again. The challenger suddenly found himself in a losing position and even a draw seemed out of reach. In the thirty-first move he had to admit defeat. Anatoly Karpov became the new old world champion and the grey heads in the Kremlin could breathe a sigh of relief.

Epilog

At the ceremony Karpov did not look like someone who had just won the most prestigious title in the world of chess. He was completely exhausted and probably more than the sweet feeling of victory, he was overwhelmed by a warm sense of relief. There was indeed a lot at stake, and Karpov, unlike Korchnoi, was not playing just for his own honour. He had the hopes of a quarter of a billion Soviet citizens, who had his poster on their walls. Not to mention the KGB and the ruthless party bosses who saw chess as an extension of the propaganda war.

Tolya lived up to their expectations, despite many twists and turns and a close encounter with catastrophe. There is no doubt that he has made his mark among the immortals. Everyone who matters in the chess world acknowledges it.

Viktor boycotted the ceremony. He was so disappointed that he did not even sign the final minutes. He was convinced that the system – the Soviet Union had the main say in FIDE – had cheated him again. Many agreed that Korchnoi had indeed been beaten up in the Philippines too, but he still found himself in a position where he could have taken the win, but he had faltered at a crucial moment. However, despite the defeat, he proved once again that he is a true fighter.

While the Soviet delegation was triumphantly heading home, Korchnoi flew to Hong Kong, where an exhibition bout awaited him. The very next day he was on the other side of the world, in Buenos Aires, at the Chess Olympiad. Colleagues who met him there said he looked happy. As if he had not just lost the most important game of his life in the worst possible way.

That was Viktor Korchnoi. When he sat down at the chess board, he forgot everything else. If he could play chess, he was happy. By the way, he won the gold medal at the Olympiad without any problems and immediately afterwards he was awarded the Chess Oscar, the prize for the best player, which is awarded every year by journalists from all over the world.

In the end, he did not dwell on the past. He was always thinking about the next step, the next move. He probably reached his peak in the Philippines, but he was also in extraordinary form in his later years. In fact, he was so good that three years later he won the Candidates’ Tournament and won the right to challenge Karpov again. The match went down in history as the “Meran Massacre”, the fifty-year-old Korchnoi had no chance and lost 6-2 after only eighteen games.

This was far from the end of his career, Viktor Grozny haunted chess tournaments until his old age and achieved several records that will probably never be broken again. Today, he is considered the best chess player never to have won the title of World Champion.

After Meran, Karpov only consolidated his status and it was only when the young Gari Kasparov appeared on the scene a few years later that he got a worthy opponent. Their legendary duels in the 1980s were also marked by more than just the action behind the chess board, but that is another story. Karpov is at the top of the list in terms of World Championship titles won and is rightly considered a giant of the King’s Game.

Finally, in their old age, Karpov and Korchnoi had a falling out. They became close when they played bridge during breaks in tournaments. Just like in the old days in Leningrad. Later Tolya even invited Viktor to join his team.

There was a comic complication at the time, when the Soviet ambassador in Switzerland refused to give Korchnoi a visa, thinking it was a hoax. Karpov had to call the embassy personally and Korchnoi returned to his homeland after many years.

The two former adversaries then worked together for three years. What about old grudges? When Karpov was asked by reporters if they had ever spoken about those hellish three months in Baguio, Tolya cackled and replied that they had never said a word about it.