Anatoly Karpov: The Champion by Forfeit Who Spent Decades Proving It

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Anatoly Karpov was born in 1951 in Zlatoust in the Ural Mountains, learned chess at four and reached candidate master at 11. At 12 he entered Mikhail Botvinnik's academy, where Botvinnik said the boy had no clue about chess and no future in it, then assigned him punishing homework. Karpov became the youngest Soviet master at 15, studied at Leningrad State University to be near his coach Semyon Furman, and grew into a national hero who owned one of perhaps four Mercedes-Benz cars in the Soviet Union. In 1974 he beat Lev Polugaevsky, Boris Spassky and Viktor Korchnoi in the candidates matches, but Bobby Fischer demanded that a 9 to 9 tie leave him champion. FIDE refused, and in April 1975 Karpov became the 12th world champion by default.

Karpov answered the doubters with a boa constrictor positional style and a long run of tournament wins, including an 11 to 7 defeat of Korchnoi in 1981 at Merano. Against Garry Kasparov in 1984 he led 5 to 0 needing one win, but the match ran five months and 48 games before FIDE stopped it with no winner, and he lost the title in the 1985 rematch. In five matches against Kasparov he never won one. In 1993 he regained the FIDE title after Kasparov's breakaway, then scored 11 of 13 at Linares in 1994 for a 2985 performance rating. Later he served in the Russian State Duma for United Russia, supported the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the Dima Yakovlev law, and was sanctioned by the EU and UK.

• Karpov reportedly lost about 22 pounds during the 1984 Kasparov match.
• In Seville in 1987 he needed only a draw in game 24 but resigned on move 64 under time pressure.
• The 1994 Linares field averaged a 2685 rating and he finished two and a half points clear.
• FIDE suspended his title of Ambassador for Life after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
• He assembled a major Belgian philately collection covering 1742 to 1980 and a chess library of about 9,000 books.