First it was Muhammad Ali, and now GM Viktor Korchnoi, another legend lost as GM Korchnoi passed away earlier today at the age of 85. I did actually meet GM Korchnoi in Toronto in 1985, and he will be missed. Probably one of the greatest players to not win the World Championship, as he certainly had his chances.
He rightly belongs in a small group of great players to not win the World Championship (along with Keres, Rubinstein, Bronstein, Geller, etc.). Besides his chess play, his outspoken, independent nature made him not just a great chess player but a great man.
What were Victor Korchnoi’s most-memorable achievements/moments within the U.S.?
I can think of:
1974 World Championship Candidates match vs. Henrique Mecking in Augusta, GA.
(Korchnoi 7.5 - Mecking 5.5)
(I have the official program).
1981 Lone Pine: In the final Lone Pine international tournament, Korchnoi won clear 1st-place with 7-2.
Let’s not get carried away. Korchnoi was legitimately a world championship caliber player, and I’ll go along with “outspoken” and “independent nature”, but “great man” is a stretch. Anyone who ever beat him in a chess game can testify to his poor sportsmanship, and “poor sportsmanship” is about as delicately as I can phrase it. If not for the AUG I would characterize his behavior in other terms. He was never exactly in the running for Miss Congeniality. While respecting Victor Korchnoi’s immense talent for chess I have to say that the fact that I never had the chance to meet him does not bother me any.
Victor Korchnoi was a great player. Multiple USSR champion. Multiple candidate for the World Championship spanning the 1950’s through the 1970’s. Challenger to Anatoly Karpov in several tough matches. His creativity, stubbornness in defense, and overall fighting spirit over a long career are amazing. When many of his peers in age were already long retired from battle, Victor Korchnoi was still winning tournaments against younger opponents. As the poem says, he “raged against the dying of the light”
I have heard and read many stories of his combativeness and anger when he lost games, even in a simul. He gave a simultaneous exhibition in Pittsburgh one time and was, ahem, less than gracious with some of his opponents and the organizers. Victor seems to have battled with everyone from the time he was a young player. Ruthlessly objective in analysis, even with himself, which you can see from annotations in his books. That stubbornness gained him no favors with the Soviet chess elite, with his colleagues, and with other opponents. He seemed to be at odds with everyone. The only thing that he seems to have loved was chess. Yes, he was a cantankerous old man. Yes, he fought with the Soviet system. Yes, he would excoriate you if you won a game from him. He was a fighter through and through and respected, if not universally loved. There will likely be memorial tournaments organized to honor his memory. The stories told at those events will be both biting and funny. He was one of the last of the great players who made modern chess. Rest in peace, Victor.
I do not think I was getting carried away. What makes something great (which, by one definition, is “of ability, quality, or eminence considerably above the normal or average”) is not solely ones comportment with others, sportsmanship or otherwise. If I had referred to him as a ‘great sportsman’ I would agree with your critique. However, he was a great man in many respects - and his battles with authority, Soviet and otherwise, are part of what makes him, IMHO, ‘great.’
There’s a readily available video of his reaction to Sophia Polgar beating him in blitz. How to describe his reaction? Less than gracious. He might have made a good US Chess board member in that regard.
His strength of character in the face of the Soviet chess system and its golden boy Karpov was illustrative of what it took to survive that system. Of course, he defected and made his way in the West with not a little amount of difficulty. I’ve read that without his wife, Petra?, his way would have been much more difficult.
If you haven’t read it, Lenny Cavallaro’s book Persona Non Grata shows what he had to contend with and what it took to survive when dealing with the Soviet machine.
This is true. But Korchnoi survived the siege of Leningrad and, decades later, faced down the Soviet régime as an individual. He was someone who did not have the talent of Petrosian, Tal, Spassky, Fischer, or Karpov, and yet came within one game of the title on two separate occasions. His hypercompetitiveness at & away from the board helped him overachieve. It also made him act like a world-class jerk on many occasions.
If we cut slack to Fischer for his mental illness, we could certainly extend the same courtesy to Korchnoi for his rudeness.
Persona Non Grata is a good read, but I found myself picking up Korchnoi’s Olms books and vol. 5 of Kasparov’s My Great Predecesors last night.
There is a vast difference between “great chess player” and “great man”. Fischer and Korchnoi were certainly great chess players; neither of them comes remotely close to being a great man. Kindness is a fundamental test of greatness in a person.
“Speak nothing but good of the dead” aside, it’s unfair of me to compare Fischer (who wrestled with his own demons more than the Soviets) to Korchnoi, who had to play the 1981 Karpov match while his son was a political prisoner.
Take this famous incident: it’s really bad manners to play to flag someone from the pawn-down side of the Philidor position. The loser has a right to be irritated: it’s like trying to win a pawn-down opposite-color bishop ending on time.
Of course, it’s also bad manners (above say ELO 1900?) to try to win the Philidor position
I once saw a Life Master lose the game after having achieved Philidor’s position as defender in the R+P vs R endgame. Of course he knew how to handle Philidor’s position, but thought he saw another equally good way to make the draw only to realize too late that he had miscalculated.
I suppose I do care how someone treats all sentient beings. More so as I age. It has always fascinated me how purveyors of Great Evil, like Krylenko, Stalin, Hitler, Dick Cheney for example, can also be kind and loving in other areas of their lives.
As for Viktor the Terrible, he was kind and loving to his wife and I think he had a cat that he was very fond of, although I may be thinking of Smyslov. He was good at his profession, chess, but was apparently not a particularly nice human being. I had that distinct impression from the way he reacted to losing a blitz game to Sofia Polgar. When I first saw the video I thought that maybe it was a one off. Apparently it was quite true to character.
Adolph Hitler was quite fond of his dogs, but that didn’t make him a kind man. Kindness isn’t measured by how you treat one person or animal, but the totality of how you treat all you meet during your brief time above ground. Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. were great men. Bobby Fischer and Victor Korchnoi were great chess players, but that’s all.
great chess players, but
