A great rivalry was between Karpov and Spassky. Back in 1974 both met in a semifinal candidate match. It was a battle of ex champion vs. future world champion.

With Bobby Fischer watching intently for his challenger.

A match removed from his title, Spassky would try to fight his way past the hard charging Anatoly Karpov.

Spassky would win the first game from the black side of the board. But Karpov would not be deterred and dominated the rest of the way by winning 4 games.

Karpov's easy domination of Spassky might have encouraged Bobby Fischer to modify the competitive rules vs Karpov - for the Chess World Championship.

---

<alexmagnus: You [TheMacMan] make a good propagandist, mixing two rating systems trhe way it suits you. Fischer's 2895 was a peak chessmetrics rating in October 1971 (his CM rating after the Spassky match was 2880), while Karpov's 2705 was a non-peak FIDE rating in 1975, things impossible to compare. For reference, Fischer's FIDE rating was "only" 2780, while Karpov's Chessmetrics rating in 1975 was around 2800 (between 2799 in December and 2807 in September).

So the match Fischer-Karpov was either 2780 vs. 2705 (FIDE) or 2880 vs. 2800 (Chessmetrics) but no way 2895 vs 2705. A 75-80-point difference. Just for the reference, the biggest rating difference in a WC match which ended with the win of the lower rated player was 77 points (Kramnik-Kasparov).

As for performance rating: the 3100+ you mentioned belongs probably to the FIDE TPR in the US Championship which he won with 11/11. Your beloved chessmetrics cites his highest TPR at 2887 (in the Match vs Larsen). So before you make propaganda, chose <one> rating systrem to operate with and don't mix two systems.>

---

<Capabal: I have no problem acknowledging that Fischer in 75 was probably still a bit better than Karpov -- in spite of the fact that he hadn’t played in 3 years. But again, the fact that he hadn’t played at all since he beat Spassky is important. In the first place it removes all possibility of evaluating how his play was in 75, and it is also reasonable to suppose that lack of real play for so long does not make you play better.

It is also a matter of general agreement that Spassky played better in the Candidates match against Karpov than he had played in 72 against Fischer. And yet Spassky was soundly defeated by Karpov. As somebody mentioned, Fischer may not have been playing, but he was surely watching. There is no doubt he went through Karpov’s games in detail.

In any case, the notion that Karpov had a 0.1% chance is totally ridiculous and representative of a particularly delusional mindframe that imbues Fischer with quasi-divine powers. Karpov himself had assessed his chances at about 30-40 percent, and that’s probably how it was.

Speaking of chessmetrics, you may find in its pages the following reference to the player who you say had a 0.1% chance: Best Individual Event Performance between 1840 and 2005: The best individual event performance between 1840 and 2005 was achieved by Anatoly Karpov with a <Chessmetrics Performance Rating of 2899> in Linares, 1994.

"This performance against the best players in the world put his Elo rating tournament performance at 2985, the highest performance rating of any player in history."

and then read this ......

"On June 1971, Bobby Fischer defeated Mark Taimanov with 6 wins, no draws, no losses in the Candidates quarterfinals in Vancouver, Canada. On July he defeated Bent Larsen also with a perfect 6-0 score in the Candidates semi-final in Denver, Colorado. His performance rating was 3060."

http://www.chess-poster.com/great_p...

<The initial plan is to play for about six months in all countries where we once had world championship matches. That is, Spain, Russia, Great Britain, France and the United States>

When you're up 5-0, you can pretty much go all out, playing for just that one more win, every game.

With such an approach, you might lose a game or two, but with such a big lead, you're going to get the 6th win in due course, long before Kasparov could have tied the match.

6 wins, you go home, you're still the champ.

But arrogance said: no, I want 6-0, even if we have to play countless draws first.

1) It was only against 2 people. If you play your "angstgegner", you will do worse. The score is heavily influenced by personal details and preferences.

2) It was a knockout tournament. If you play for the worldchampionship, you play for all or nothing. You don't play for elo-rating. And you don't play to minize losses. You take extra risks, which you would not have done in a tournament. Therefor the 2x 6-0 results are overvalued.