Viktor ‘The Terrible’ and his Indian conection

Viktor ‘The Terrible’ is an apt name given to Korchnoi, whose 60-year chess career and life, both inseparably aligned, ended last week. Viktor Korchnoi is best remembered as the greatest of challengers, the best player not to have won a World championship but more than that he would be known for carrying out a crusade against the Soviet Union, much like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel prize winner for literature, around the same time.

Until his death at the age of 85, Korchnoi, who took up Swiss nationality after defection from the Soviet Union, breathed chess. Last January when the organisers of the Zurich tournament invited him as special guest, he said he had no business to be there as a spectator. He was used to playing in Zurich until recently. 

Korchnoi had the unique distinction of staying in the top 100 even when he was in his 70s and he loved to play in tournaments until a couple of years before his death. He was a strong individual with strong opinions and my first encounter with him in 1990 at the Novi Sad Olympiad was not very pleasant, though I respected him even after he declined me an interview because he had to prepare for his next game. I had plunged deep into chess during Korchnoi’s marathon struggle against Anatoly Karpov in 1978 in the Philippines playing the moves published by English newspapers and that championship was also marred by allegations and counter-allegations after Korchnoi’s team spotted a para-psychologist Dr Zukhar among the spectators on the front rows.

Korchnoi was a regular at the Olympiad, first for Soviet Union and then for Switzerland. I got to see Korchnoi again at the Manila Olympiad in 1992 where Kasparov and Kramnik (debutant) were the big hits. He had interesting face-offs with two of India’s best Grandmasters, Vishy Anand and Dibyendu Barua. Anand has an unbeaten record against Korchnoi, 8-0 (with 3 draws) but it was Barua, who bamboozled him as a boy wonder when he beat the great man in London in 1982. That was the best result achieved by an Indian then against a top-10 player and launched Barua on the international stage. I had the chance to watch Korchnoi vs Barua (Game 2) in 1993 at the Biel Interzonal when the Indian took a draw against him, interestingly in a technical ending.

Naturally, Korchnoi was close to Anand because he liked anyone who was challenging the Russians. No wonder, Anand paid rich tributes to him last week when he said. “He would never give up and would explain the position in depth to us. He always admonished me for playing too fast. He was a chess player in its truest sense without parallel.”

But the most fascinating comment by Anand was about Viktor’s rook endings in which Korchnoi was a World champion in his own right. “Every time I had a rook ending I would look at Viktor following the game and think what would Viktor say??” 

Korchnoi was one of a kind among the chess maestros and probably the best way to honour him would be by holding a tournament in endings. The Swiss organisers would be mulling this for sure.