Semifinal Candidate matches
The three Candidates Matches were organized in Shangvi Nagar, an industrial city situated 32 km from Hydrabad, India. For the event, Mr. Ravi Shanghvi bided SFR. 210,000 plus another $ 500,000 for the Final Candidates. Each match with eight games and a prize fund of SFr. 70,000.
One thing was common in the three matches: all players who had an early lead went on to lose…
Sanghi Nagar, VII-VIII, 1994.
Vishy Anand- Gata Kamsky
When Anand won game 3 and 4, no one was any doubt about the outcome. But strange think started to happen to the national hero. In game 5 with a strategical winning position he offered a draw when the position was still advantageous for him. What is a sign? Maybe. From then the match reversed completely. Anand lost two games in a row and cracked completely during the tie-break session. Kamsky: “I am sorry said Kamsky t o the Indian reporter, after the fourth game I felt like I need a miracle, but…”
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Total | |||
| Anand V | = | = | 1 | 1 | = | 0 | 0 | = | 0 | 0 | 4.0 | ||
| Kamsky G | = | = | 0 | 0 | = | 1 | 1 | = | 1 | 1 | 6.0 |
Sanghi Nagar, VII-VIII, 1994.
During the match the play of Kramnik was usually very poor and tension made him completely unrecognizable. Gelfand in contrary was in good shape and played well it was expected. For many the match was decided on a single move. The fifth move in the final game. Kramnik: “Actually my result is quite good- it should be worse. My move five in game eight was of course a blunder, but I was very tired and would have lost anyway. I was too tired before I came here. Only two weeks after the PCA Candidates was not enough to recover. I made a mistake by playing both cycles.”
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | Total | ||
| Kramnik V | = | = | 1 | 0 | = | = | = | 0 | 3.5 | |
| Gelfand B | = | = | 0 | 1 | = | = | = | 1 | 4.5 |
Sanghi Nagar, VII-VIII, 1994.
Jan Timman- Valery Salov
Salov achieved an advantage in also seven games but his endgame technique was far from what he sowed previously. Hopefully for him Timman didn’t play better and like I some other match everything was decided in one game.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | Total | ||
| Salov V | 0 | = | = | 1 | = | = | 1 | = | 4.5 | |
| Timman J | 1 | = | = | 0 | = | = | 0 | = | 3.5 |
Final Candidate matches
As a sequel to the Sanghi World Chess Championship Candidates Matches Round 2 successfully held July-August 1994, Sanghi Industries was awarded sponsorship of the Semifinal Round 3 matches. The three winners from the previous round, GM Valery Salov of Russia, GM Gata Kamsky of the USA and GM Boris Gelfand of Belarus joined FIDE World Champion Anatoly Karpov of Russia, who was directly seeded into the semifinals. Karpov faced Gelfand while Salov met Kamsky in the two best-of-ten matches. This was the first occasion in which the FIDE World Champion played in India.
Sanghi Industries offered $500,000 the biggest prize fund ever for this stage of the World Championship cycle. Elaborate arrangements were made for organizing these matches, to ensure a successful and smooth conduct. The event received widespread coverage both in Indian and foreign media. Over 70 sports journalists covered the matches and 35 other international journals requested daily bulletins and press releases.
Boris Gelfand- Anatoly Karpov
At the start of the match Gelfand managed to cause some problems for Karpov in his favorite Caro-Kann opening and even took the lead after three games. However Gelfand never could solve his own problems while playing with the black pieces and Karpov was able to equalize the score in the very next game and moved on to the lead after two more games when Gelfand tried the risky Benko Gambit. The next game was the game which really broke Gelfand’s spirit. Gelfand held the initiative for much of game seven, declining the possibility of an early draw. He then pushed too hard and found himself in a difficult bishop endgame. Both players and seconds spent sleepless nights analyzing the game, but the Karpov team seemed to better uncover the secrets of the position and Karpov was able to take a decisive lead by winning the endgame in 80 moves.
Karpov: “In the match, Gelfand gave way before maturity and experience…Perhaps our dual can be divided into two parts: first five games and next four. In the first part passed in equal and intense struggle and close peacefully 2,5-2,5. In the second part I was evidently winning. I won three games and even in the fourth which closed with a draw I cold have gained a victory with one move.”
Sanghi Nagar, II, 1995.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Total | ||
| Gelfand B | = | = | 1 | 0 | = | 0 | 0 | = | 0 | 3.0 | |
| Karpov A | = | = | 0 | 1 | = | 1 | 1 | = | 1 | 6.0 |
Gata Kamsky- Valery Salov
In contrast to most expectations, this was an extraordinarily one-sided contest. The first game showed that Salov was not in the best of form with two major blunders by Salov ruining an interesting game. By game three, when inadequate opening preparation by Salov was ruthlessly exposed by Kamsky, the match was already looking safe for the young American. Salov’s last chance lay in game four when he built up a winning position for the first and only time in the match. However, Kamsky hung onto a draw in 107 moves and by crushing Salov in the next game put the match beyond his reach.
Sanghi Nagar, II, 1995.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | Total | |
| Kamsky G | 1 | = | 1 | = | 1 | 1 | = | 5.5 |
| Salov V | 0 | = | 0 | = | 0 | 0 | = | 1.5 |
On …1995 Radio Moscow announced the dead of the the 6th world champion and “patriarch” Mikhail Moiseevich Botvinnik at the age of . .. In an interview published in Shahmatny SSSR eleven years before his dead Botvinnik told about the world champions he played with and his experience at the championships:
Q: Mikhail Moiseevich, you are five times world champion. You have held this title for thirteen years. What was the reason of such huge success?
A: Perhaps, I was a good practical player and a good researcher at the same time. That was why, when coming out at the start of a new tournament, I was not the person my opponent had expected to see. Some of my chess qualities were a surprise for my opponent. I played differently. That was why I managed to win two return matches. I picked up a lot of useful information from the first match, which I had lost. That helped me to study my opponent and myself. My opponent in the return match was the same as before, while I had already changed.
Q: In the world championship match you met with four different rivals. Could you briefly describe each of them?
A: David Bronstein was undoubtedly a colourful figure among chess grandmasters. Brilliant attacker capable of making original decisions, he got to the world championship match pushing aside such outstanding masters as Keres, Smyslov, Boleslavsky and others.
Bronstein was very good at complicated piece positioning. He was dangerous in the middle game. But when a precise analysis was required or exceptions from the rules had to be found, he was weaker. There was another factor, which helped me to draw in an unfavourable situation (I had not played a single tournament game for 3 years) – human and sportive drawbacks of the candidate. He had some inclination for eccentricity and complacency as well as naivety in the sporting tactics…
Vassily Smyslov was indisputably the strongest tournament chessplayer in the period of 1953-1958. His talent was universal. He could play subtly in the opening, then go to deep defence or attach intensely, or, finally, coolly manoeuvre. As for the endgame, it was his element. Sometimes he made decisions, which were astonishingly deep. His strength was particularly revealed when he faced prepared combinations of his opponent. So, he would sit for couple of hours… and find counter-play, a refutation. Combination of good calculation of variations, courage, independence and natural health made Smyslov invulnerable at those times.
Unfortunately, his human character had some traits of laziness… He limited his creative side to reduce his chess work. But the talent could not develop without systematic work. Although Smyslov was practically invincible at that time, that drawback of his already influenced his performance…
Mikhail Tal astonished the chess world in the end of the 50’s by a series of brilliant tournament successes. But his huge popularity was not based on his sportive results only, but also on exclusively vivid and witty games.
There were many legends about Tal, saying that he hypnotised his opponents and suppressed their will for resistance. His risky and sometimes even doubtful sacrifices were announced a discovery of some new ways in the chessic art. A demonic look on is face contributed to those tales. And the tales they were, but what was the real basis of his chess strength?
First of all, he had an excellent memory. From the point of view of cybernetics and computer science, he had bigger capacity and speed as compared to other grandmasters. That factor could be highly important, if the pieces on the chessboard were highly active. That was why Tal was opting for complicated positions in order to acquire high activity of pieces. On the one hand, in that situation he could make a good use of his unique ability to quickly calculate the variations, his speed and memory; on the other hand, his opponent was short of time and unable to think and understand a vast tree of possible variations.
Such a utilitarian approach secured achievement of his aims, though at a higher cost. It caused one-sided style of playing, narrowed creative abilities and concealed the possibility of future failures. In the return match I managed to prove that the creative drawbacks of his performance were stronger than his unique calculating abilities…
Tigran Petrosian had a style, which was completely different from that of other chessplayers. Perhaps, only Flohr could be named his predecessor and Karpov might be called his successor. They are all characterised by a subtle and original perception of the position as well as an aspiration for success without significant risk.
Petrosian had a peculiar chess talent. He never tried to play “on position” in the sense as it had been understood before. He created positions where events were developing as in a slow motion demonstration of a movie. It was always difficult to reach his pieces as if his opponent was sinking in a “bog”, which surrounded defensive works of Petrosian. If an opponent finally managed to make a dangerous attack, there either was too little time left, or fatigue of the preceding struggle adversely affected it. One can’t omit Petrosian’s superb technique in realisation of positional advantage.
Unfortunately, Tigran Petrosian was not an investigator, which would inevitably lead to lower results due to decreasing calculating abilities at older age.
Q: You had a convincing victory over the strongest chessplayers in the world championship match in 1948. However, you did not show such excellent results in other matches, except for the return matches. How can you explain it?
A: In their time, Morphy, Steinitz, Lasker, Capablanca and Alekhine had a significant superiority over other chessplayers. First of all, they were more talented. Natural selection of the world’s strongest chessplayers took place in a narrow circle of players. Their names were well known. In the 50-60’s the mass basis of chess became so huge that the circle of the strongest chessplayers grew and as a result it became very crowded at the chess Olympus. A good dozen of grandmasters were highly talented having good health, strong character and special training.
I would like to mention a significance of the special training. Sometimes it can be intuitive, sometimes it helps to minimise opponent’s influence. In any case, one can assert without fear of making a blunder that talent is not a decisive factor in forming a strong modern chessplayer.
There may be a lot of reasons for defeat in an equal struggle, but, perhaps, the most important is chessplayer’s mood or his “shape”. There may be periods of a good mood or a bad physical form sometimes. Why such periods exist? – That’s another question, but they still exist and one can’t get rid of them.
Q: Mikhail Moiseevich, you have told many times that a chessplayer must have four qualities in order to achieve high level in chess. Those are talent, strong character, special training, hardy and industrious nervous system. Did all the champions possess these qualities?
A: Of course, not. Capablanca was a good example. He possessed only two of these features: talent and diligence. But as he was not more industrious than many other grandmasters, we can admire his phenomenal chess talent. After Capablanca’s death Alekhine told that we would never see such a great chess genius.
Q: So, what kind of a talent he had?
A: A chessplayer must make original decisions at the chessboard as chess positions rarely recur in the tournament practice. But there are some ways to make certain number of these positions less original and more casual. With this purpose a chessplayer applies a limited number of openings and prepares middle game plans at home. All this makes decision-making process easier.
Capablanca had no such problems for a long time. Of course, to be on the safe side, he preferred opening where unexpected surprises were minimised, still it was all the same to him what to play. Thus, Capablanca didn’t have to prepare for the game. His talent was in using move-searching algorithm in the unique positions. He mainly used this algorithm by intuition.
In his younger years, this algorithm made him invincible. We must mention that he had lost only 8 tournament games by the time he became the world champion at the age of 33. No other chessplayer could ever achieve the same result.
With the time passing Campomanes and Kasparov became once more good friends. It happened middle of 1994 when PCA director B. Rice announced that for the good of chess FIDE and PCA should work together. FIDE leadership was busy with internal election but in October dramatic news shook FIDE. The Greek Chess Federation announced that the Thessaloniki Olympiads which were supposed to be organized in November have been cancelled. Kasparov and A. Makarov, the new Russian President, offered spontaneously to rescue the event.
In press conferences prior the Olympiad, Kasparov had announced his desire for reconciliation and unification between FIDE and PCA under the Presidency of Campomanes. It was surprising proposal from the person who spearheaded the creation of GMA I 1986 and the PCA in 1993, both widely seen as defiance to the authority of FIDE and of Campomanes as its President.
In the spirit of unity and with the view of future cooperation, the FIDE President, after consultation with the Presidential Board, and Garry Kasparov, representing the PCA Board, signed the Declaration of Cooperation between FIDE and the PCA. Both recognizing that the split in 1993 could have been avoided, they nevertheless saw the positive developments, primarily an increase in fund-raising activities which have identified new sources of financial support for chess. They hoped to nurture these new sources and to strengthen the trend towards commercial and multinational sponsorship which will hasten the steady development of the chess world. The aim was to lead the way to an Agreement between FIDE and PCA which will usher in a new chess era based upon full and vigorous cooperation between the two organizations. They pledged to combine forces in order not to lose this historic momentum that has been generated in the chess world, and to integrate policies and unify efforts to make chess a professional self-financed sport capable of diving into the mainstream to be come a marketing by-word and a universal sport. To fulfil the goals set forth in the Declaration of Cooperation between FIDE and PCA, they proposed to reunite the two cycles in order to end the current confusion among chess players, chess fans, sponsors and media, and to present a system that will bring the World Chess Championship Match to the core of public interest. To this end, a Reunification Match will be organized in 1996 after the completion of the two cycles.
Strong of the Russian support Campomanes was reelected in office for the third time a month later. In his nomination’s speech Campomanes announced that his main task for the coming year will be to work for a reunification match between the FIDE Champion and the PCA Champion.