Korchnoi Around the Web (Updated, Updated Again, Update #3)
Tuesday, June 7, 2016 at 1:14AM Viktor Korchnoi died yesterday - Monday - at the age of 85, and he is being memorialized as he ought to be. The best material will probably be in Russian, and those who speak that language are invited - even encouraged - to supply any Russian language Korchnoi-related links they deem appropriate. (Likewise others with English-language links.)
Two good English-language tributes are on the Chess24 and ChessBase websites, and the Telegraph gives an excellent obituary in the mainstream press, though it could have said more about his later life and career. The same can be said for the otherwise good obit in the New York Times and the similar, slightly better version by the same author on the World Chess website. That omission is rectified by The Guardian, which even notes the two events he contested in 2015.
UPDATE: Edward Winter's Chess History site has a new (or at least newly updated) page compiling its past Korchnoi material.
UPDATE 2: Chess.com has a couple of pieces. Peter Doggers offers a good overview of Korchnoi's career, with some games, videos, and tweets. The other remembrance is by none other than Garry Kasparov. It's a pity he doesn't say even more, but to be fair he gets 200 large pages in volume 5 of Kasparov's My Great Predecessors series. (Has Karpov written or said anything about Korchnoi's passing that's on the web?)
UPDATE 3: Peter Svidler on Korchnoi.
Reader Comments (11)
Korchnoi deeply impressed me in my early days as a chessplayer.
Even his play in simultaneous exhibitions was spectacular: I once witnessed a win where in the middle game he had a rook and a knight and a triple pawn for the queen. and slowly outplayed his opponent .
He also played in Bad Kissingen at least three times where I received a signature in one of his books through his wife.
Only maybe Lasker can match him in terms of chess longevity.
Korchnoi was a hero to many when he took on Karpov and the Soviet establishment - amazing he could do that when already into middle age.
Leonard Barden's obit is excellent and of course Barden was a contemporary of Korchnoi, only a year and half older. His column in the Guardian has been going for 54 years!
Here's a Barden-Korchnoi game from 1960:
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1081319
Dennis, thank you for your effort in finding all this material on Korchnoi. He is definitely in the class of Rubinstein and Keres as great players who never won the championship. Many of his games were filled with wonderful ideas and strategies that changed the way the game was played. I hope you do a column on some of his best games to highlight his unique style.
http://www.chess-news.ru/en/node/21604:
It's remarkable that he not only played a style not unlike Lasker, but he was a super strong player at an older age, like Lasker. To me, he is one of the most interesting of the more modern players. May he RIP.
I am not the most obvious/qualified person to provide Russian material on Korchnoi, but here is what I found (relying on Google translations):
Emil Sutovsky on Facebook first only wrote "Korchnoi is dead. Don't want to write anything - moment of silence". About two hours later a tribute starting with "In March, I congratulate Victor L. 85th birthday, already knowing that this is his last birthday. A man ahead of his time, yet was powerless before running hours. Alas. However, Korchnoi has always been a mystic. And maybe somewhere up there, he's smiling his inimitable smile. And here we again remember this amazing man." Later, among much more: "Usually the defeated Victor L. rivals still spared, however, once remarked to me, immediately after the meeting, where I am in the position with a huge margin, sacrificed a piece to the eye, and found himself with nothing - "you think you are - Tal Even? Tal I not sacrificed figures without considering options. "
Korchnoi's son Igor was apparently the first one to spread the news of his father's death, also on Facebook - adding that the funeral will be 'modest', but after a few days or weeks, there might be a commemorative event for the chess world, probably in Zurich. He then gives several Russian links - didn't check the quality of Google translations, but even if it is bad, for people like me who can't read Russian they have plenty of photos:
http://chess-news.ru/node/21598 - old piece by Sosonko on Korchnoi's 70th birthday
http://chess-news.ru/node/21600 - another, apparently different tribute by Kasparov
http://chess-news.ru/node/21602, based on http://rsport.ru/chess/20160606/933967037.html - Karpov on Korchnoi: "Korchnoi was a phenomenon in chess. We must pay tribute Korchnoi -. This phenomenon in chess style of his inimitable He has a totally unique approach was to chess he was such a hard worker and talent is special, it was a player of the highest level for chess sad that left one of the last people that.... era. With Korchnoi I met when I was ten years old. As a small boy I played with him in the session. He then came to the Urals, and I played a game in Chelyabinsk - the truth, I did not get to one place, so I was playing with his friend. And then Korchnoi, a young gifted chess player, read us a lecture. But then we were friends a short time, and then become enemies, then our relationship leveled and recovered. "
On a personal note: I had the chance to "see" Korchnoi several times, when he was already old and fragile but still devoted to chess. "See" rather than "meet": I didn't talk to him (it was before I became some sort of journalist) and - unlike two of my clubmates in a blitz event - didn't play (and lose) against him.
Dennis, I find Kasparov's remembrance very good. In the Chicago tribune I found an article from Leonid Bershidsky, where he cites a remark from Karpov:
Karpov,...remembers Korchnoi with wistfulness. "His style was inimitable," he said after his death. "He was such a hard worker and a man of special talent, a chess player of the highest rank."
He was the first one with a clear record against the Kings Indian. Kramnik followed in his footsteps here. I don't know many other chessplayers with such an impact. He beat regularily much younger new forces.
From Kasparov:
"a survivor of the Great Siege"
If that's correct, if he indeed survived the winter of 1941-42 in Leningrad that's a more impressive achievement than any chess victory. It's another reason to call him Viktor the Terrible as even more fighting spirit was required. Shostakovich was evacuated in October 1941 before things got really bad (ie far more worse than they were at that moment).
According to this
https://www.chess.com/blog/Aurrvellis/chess-is-my-life-autobiography-of-victor-korchnoi
Amazing.
"The devil only knows what they (cakes and pastry) were made of."
If you ever have read something like 900 Days by HE Salisbury you can make an educated guess - and regret you have done so. I say you need it if you want to understand Kortchnoi's early teen years.
"The most difficult days of the blockade were during the winter of 1941-1942."
That's the euphemism of the year.
Here is a link from lenta.ru:
https://lenta.ru/articles/2016/06/06/korchnoy/
This is a short overview of Korchnoy chess life.
Another short overview:
http://www.gazeta.ru/sport/2016/06/06/a_8288579.shtml
A very honest take from Svidler. The game with which Korchnoi beat Svidler indeed was tremendeously good.