With respect, I was comparing him with Smyslov's performance in reaching the Candidates final in 1983. Being 6th-10th in the German rankings, is not quite the same as reaching 3rd place in the World Championship qualification cycle.

<"This short game is a classic example of a battle decided entirely during home preparation," Karpov proudly writes in his book of best games. [here comes a lengthy quote of what Karpov says about the key novelty of that game – 14.h3! – compared to game 15 of the same match] This is a noteworthy fact: Karpov himself admits that he won this game thanks to home preparation. Just as in the 5th and, to a considerable degree, the 19th. I must once again remind you that genuine novelties were employed in this match only by my opponent, as if dispelling the myth about Kasparov the "opening expert." Strangely enough, in this, my best of the five matches with Karpov, I did not win a single game out of the opening! Moreover, I myself was literally bombarded with opening "bombs." But Karpov was let down by the fact that when playing Black his "bombs" missed their target: in the 4th, 8th, 14th and 16th games, and also in the tragic (for me) 18th game (as well as in the triumphal 22nd) I outplayed him in a complicated middlegame. And I won the match thanks to my enormous playing advantage at the board, rather than home preparation.> (from "Garry Kasparov on Modern Chess, Part Three: Kasparov v Karpov 1986-1987")

Finally, with or without opening prep, Karpov and Kasparov were absolute monsters throughout the rest of the game, and this is the true reason why they are rightfully considered the greatest of all-time. Karpov in particular, as an "old" man from '91-'96, played nearly the same openings with no special TNs and by and large beat everyone save Kasparov during that time.

Now to the games that Kasparov won – in games 8, 14 & 16 it seems that Kasparov had some great ideas prepared in the lines played, but Karpov managed to sidestep them every time and surprise Kasparov, so that the latter eventually had to rely mostly on his own resources otb. With regard to games 4 & 22, according to Kasparov’s own description he actually did manage to get an advantage out of the opening – not decisive or dramatic as what Karpov got in games 5 & 17, but still a definite edge that he could work with (and indeed managed to convert with excellent play). The thing is that later there were some improvements found (12…Qc7 instead Bd7 in game 4, 18…Qd7 instead of Nd7 in game 22) that made these lines, in his opinion, not dangerous for Black.

Btw, I’ve once posted another lengthy quote from Kasparov's book about the reasons for his suspicions of Vladimirov (or, more generally, that someone was leaking information to Karpov about his opening preparation) - in Karpov-Kasparov World Championship Rematch (1986). It had to do not only with his impression that Karpov was correctly predicting all of his opening choices and coming up with good ideas against them, but also with Karpov supposedly making again and again exactly the same mistakes as Kasparov and his team in evaluating some of these lines (such as the Nimzo-Indian one in game 4).

Just to be clear - on this matter I feel very much the same way and find it hard to believe Karpov would do such a thing; I don't claim that Kasparov "proved" anything. But I still think what he wrote about it makes for an interesting read...

Wow, Karpov was just like Deep Blue.

Well, this is pretty much "balanced" by Kasparov not finishing with +2 in 1990 only because he didn't bother to play for a win in a hugely advantageous position in the last game but offered a draw, since he was winning the match anyway.

You are absolutely right, but interestingly enough Karpov almost managed to draw the 1990 match. In the last game he had a 75% winning position (in Kasparov's own words) but he missed a simple way to win and in the end it was Kasparov who had the winning position.

Karpov is also a very enjoyable chess commentator, very laidback and funny. I like his annonations very much, usually on the right track when evaluating positions.