
Chess legend Viktor Korchnoi has died - jacquesm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36464406
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WildUtah
Korch was within one game in a long match of winning the world championship
two different times in his forties. The champ was a young twentysomething
Karpov.

Then he went on to be the best fiftysomething chess player ever to play the
game in his fifties. And the best sixtysomething in his sixties. And the best
seventy-something in his seventies.

He had a stroke right around age eighty but managed to slip in at least one
win against American grandmaster and world championship candidate Fabiano
Caruana in 2011 after he turned eighty, so he was the best ever of that decade
as well.

Chess players usually peak a bit before thirty. Korchnoi defected after forty.
As a dissident under the Soviet system, Korchnoi didn't have the chance to
prove himself in international competition in his twenties or thirties, but he
may have been the best in the world for a long time before Karpov or Fischer
reached the championship.

~~~
TwoBit
Has any other 80 year old, or 70 year old, legitimately beaten a grandmaster?

~~~
ubernostrum
Capablanca likely could have if he hadn't died relatively young (age 53). He
had been staging a serious middle-age return to high-level play at the time
and was an extraordinarily gifted player: when Arpad Elo developed the rating
system, he compiled ratings for past players and ended up assigning Capablanca
what was at the time the highest rating of any player in history.

Meanwhile Garry Kasparov is now the same age Capablanca was at his death, and
continues to play at a very high level; he still holds a FIDE rating of 2812,
down from his peak of 2851 and historically second only to Magnus Carlsen's
peak of 2882, and in April finished third in a blitz tournament where he put
up a 2-1-3 record against eventual champion and GM Hikaru Nakamura.

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p4wnc6
He is the reason I took up playing Caro-Kann again, and the primary
inspiration for my feeling that it's much more fun to play as Black -- a
feeling that got me back into chess after years away.

~~~
pk2200
Heh, just noticed your username. Caro-Kann player confirmed. :)

~~~
tome
Can you explain that? Caro-Kann is 1. p4 c6. I can't quite work out how to
munge that to p4wnc6.

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grizzles
I read a study the other day that concluded that neuron regeneration can occur
well past middle age. I think that's the only explanation for what happened
here. He was easily the toughest senior citizen player that has ever lived.

~~~
DigitalJack
Depending on what you mean by regeneration (renewing vs replacement), it's not
clear it's a good thing. There is some indication that neurogenesis in the
hippocampus is a cause of memory loss.

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komaromy
He came so tantalizingly close to being world champion. Besides the two World
Championship matches with Karpov, one of which he lost by a single game, the
1974 Candidates final also decided the championship following Fischer's
abdication.

~~~
noir_lord
Given the soviet chess machine stacked the deck against him his whole life the
chances are on a level playing field he'd have been a good world champion.

They tried it with Fisher but his genius was such that he smashed through the
barricades and won anyway with as close to a perfect performance as a human
has ever achieved.

~~~
Lordarminius
Genius sure; but I think Fischer just could not be needled by Soviet/KGB
sheenanigans - there was just no personal connection; and being American the
possibility of assassination was out of the question. Korchnoi from the time
of his defection onwards suffered from this fear.

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deweerdt
[http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=15866](http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=15866)
has a list of notable games.

~~~
gmluke
The man was extraordinary. A couple of more detailed obituaries:

[https://www.chess.com/news/viktor-
korchnoi-1931-2016-1214](https://www.chess.com/news/viktor-
korchnoi-1931-2016-1214)

[http://en.chessbase.com/post/viktor-korchnoi-dies-
at-85](http://en.chessbase.com/post/viktor-korchnoi-dies-at-85)

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nurblieh
My favorite chess lecturer analyzes a Korchnoi win from each of the previous 6
decades.

[https://youtu.be/1n6yLPNj_Pk](https://youtu.be/1n6yLPNj_Pk) "The Legend:
Victor Korchnoi - Ben Finegold"

If you've never seen Ben Finegold lecture from the St Louis Chess Club, he's
hilarious (relative to the subject matter).

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akbarnama
Kasparov's tribute [https://www.chess.com/article/view/garry-kasparov-on-
viktor-...](https://www.chess.com/article/view/garry-kasparov-on-viktor-
korchnoi)

