Talk:World Chess Championship 1975

Tie Break in Interzonals

Why is there a "Tie Break" column in the Interzonal tables? If there was a playoff (as the article says), then there was no tie break. Adpete (talk) 11:16, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

You're right, the tie breaks had no influence on the outcome of the tournaments at the time. I have taken them from Mark Week's site (see the external link). For the purposes of this article, they merely serve to rank players in the crosstable. The coloured backgrounds should be a visual help as to which players qualified. dllu (talk) 14:26, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

In that case I think they should be removed. There exist several different tie break systems, and I don't see any point in ranking players according to a tie break system which wasn't in use in that tournament. Would you agree? Adpete (talk) 01:21, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, I agree that it is somewhat anachronistic, but the ranking of the players in the table would seem random without an explanation, so I would prefer to add an explanation like the one I gave in my answer above. One could of course re-rank tied players alphabetically or by some other logical system, but then the indivudual game results would also have to be moved around accordingly - and to be honest, adding Interzonal and Candidates tables to all the World Championship articles was quite a project for me. If you (or someone else) wants to do the tweaking, though, I'm not opposed to it. Just make sure the head-to-head results are still correct. dllu (talk) 08:14, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Karpov's status as a legitimate world champion

@Adpete:, regarding these edits, I am certain I read both expressions in one of Seirawan's books. I don't have my copies of the books with me and they're not in my local library however. It was either in Winning Chess Strategies, Karpov's biography at the end of the book, or Winning Chess Brilliancies, the introduction to one of the games Karpov played early in his career (probably game 2 or 4). If you have the books at hand, can you check? Banedon (talk) 19:42, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Winning Chess Stratgies https://www.scribd.com/document/255201301/Winning-Chess-Strategies-2nd-Edition-2005-Vasser-Seirawan-with-Jeremy-Silman-pdf , page 229. Here's the full quote:

In 1975, Karpov won the World Championship from Bobby Fischer by a forfeit. Embarrassed that he had acquired the title in this fashion, he played in almost every major tournament of the time, trying desperately to prove that he deserved the champion's mantle. By winning just about every event he played in (and he participated in more tournaments than any champion before or after him), he accumulated the finest tournament record in history.

And here's the other book https://www.scribd.com/document/149518160/Yasser-Seirawan-Winning-Chess-Brilliancies-Cleaned-up , p.31:

Many chess players refused to recognize Karpov as champion because he never defeated Fischer, a monkey Karpov carried on his back his entire career. What Anatoly Karpov did to silence his critics was simple: he won... Gradually he won grudging admirers.

However I think Seirawan is exagerating here, perhaps because his view is USA-centric, or perhaps just being dramatic for the sake of his books. I'm happy to say there were initial doubts on the validity of Karpov's title, but they were dispelled pretty quickly. Certainly not a monkey on his back his entire career (such a colourful phrase should only ever be presented as a quote). I think I can find a number of old books to back this up. So in summary, the quotes are correct (once the 2nd reference is added), but care should be taken over what is presented as opinion and what is presented as fact. Adpete (talk) 23:41, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm actually not so sure. When Kasparov split with FIDE, his championship was called "classical" because it's based on succession - the winner defeated the previous world champion in a match - which gave it a sense of legitimacy that the FIDE title did not have (Krammik expressed similar sentiments, as interviewed here). Karpov has been world champion twice, and both times he did not defeat the previous world champion. I think it's fair to use the expression "monkey Karpov carried on his back" since it's a known idiom in English ([1]). Would like to see what other editors think. At present the section is lacking a closing sentence, which I'll add. Banedon (talk) 00:24, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

I looked up all 5 of my chess history books from that era. This is the closest each of them came to casting any doubt on Karpov's legitimacy or any embarrassment on Karpov's part:

"The International Chess Federation had no choice but to award the title to his official challenger, Anatoly Karpov. Thus, unlike previous champions, the 24-year-old Karpov did not get the chance to demonstrate what he could do against his predecessor in a title match. But what he did was to prove clearly he is the best active player in the world today." -- Robert Byrne, "Anatoly Karpov: The Road to the World Chess Championship", 1976

"Determined to prove himself no mere paper champion he played in major events with great frequency. His results were phenomenal... The pundits who predicted that Fischer could annihilate Karpov began to swallow their words." -- Michael Stean writing the introduction to "Karpov vs Korchnoi World Championship 1978" by Bent Larsen

"In 1975 Karpov won the world championship by default, since Fischer did not defend his title, but Karpov's results since then have been formidable, not only in tournaments but also in match play... He will undoubtably go down in history as one of the greatest world champions." -- Raymond Keene + David Goodman, "The Centenary match: Kasparov Karpov III"

"In spite of the fact he won the title without playing Fischer, Karpov has already shown himself to be a worthy titleholder." -- Reuben Fine, "The World's Great Chess Games", 1976

And Kasparov's book on the 1985 match says nothing about how Karpov got the title. So there's 5 books without anyone casting the slightest doubt on the legitimacy of Karpov as champion. Based on them, I think I'm pretty safe saying that Seirawan's view is a minority one. Adpete (talk) 10:36, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

I feel like Seirawan isn't actually contradicting anyone. For example the first source clearly says Karpov was the best active player. The second source states that Karpov was determined to prove himself as a genuine champion. If you believe the world champion is the best player in the world, then Karpov's case was similar to Stenitz's, who could not claim to be the world champion while Morphy was alive.

So we don't get too abstract, I think the section should say that Karpov becoming champion without having defeated the previous champion is unusual, and he therefore started on less-firm ground than other champions. He then set about proving his legitimacy, and did so with his streak of tournament wins. The current text is a bit light on the first part, and I would expand it. Banedon (talk) 11:30, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

What you suggest is fine. The problems I have (which were in the old text, but not in the text you suggest) were with saying that it was a monkey on his back his entire career. I think those references indicate that his results confirmed his legitimacy ("removed the monkey from his back", if you like) pretty quickly. Incidentally, if one thinks Karpov always had/has a monkey on his back for not being able to prove he was better than Fischer, then the same goes for Kasparov - and Kramnik for that matter. Adpete (talk) 23:51, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

I can agree with that. Banedon (talk) 07:11, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

What Adpete said. "Monkey on his back" was just awful whether for his entire career or just 5 minutes, and should never ever ever ever ever have been in the article. That kind of language is never appropriate in Wikipedia outside of a direct quote attributed to the speaker by name in the text (not a footnote). Seirawan is a useful source on many topics but really he's a full-blown Fischer apologist and can't be used as a reliable source for that kind of statement. That kind of sensational claim needs a source with at least a hint of neutrality and objectivity, and Seirawan hasn't a shred of either on this subject. Other chess writers have indicated that Karpov wanted to prove the legitimacy of his title using less bombastic language that is more suitable for a WP:NPOV account in Wikipedia. Quale (talk) 07:21, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

The issue is not whether Karpov was or wasn't a legit world champion (or whether he was seen as such). The issue is that some seem to equate not casting doubts on Karpov's legitimacy with saying that he was stronger than Fischer, particularly in 1975. Not being able to confront Fischer OTB, Karpov went on to at least demonstrate he was better than everyone else. But again, that's not the same as demonstrating he could best Fischer who dominated the upper echelon more convincingly than anybody else before or after, including Karpov. Some people tend to forget Fischer peaked at 2785 at a time when only about a dozen players were even able to break the 2600 barrier. Some people tend to overlook the fact that while Karpov might have won more strong tournaments than Fischer, he never distanced himself from the rest of the pack to the extent Fischer did, in spite of the fact that the "pack" largely consisted of the "generation defeated by Fischer" (as referred to by Korchnoi) and these top players weren't getting any younger or stronger. Yet in spite of that, for 2 or 3 years in the 70s Karpov's rating dropped below the 2700 mark. Maybe that's the monkey Seirawan was referring to. Byrne at least was careful enough to make the distinction "best active player in the world today". 2001:BB6:78A5:C600:60F8:D07B:CDBD:BA46 (talk) 22:48, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

Bias?

On the subject of the probable winner, the article cites only Karpov and Kasparov. For one Kasparov has nearly always been biased against Fischer (he openly admitted so) and is one of the very few - if not the only - authoritative source both then and now to favor Karpov. Yet even he claimed that Karpov had good chances, not that he would have very likely won. Karpov is then cited as if to support this assertion, when in fact he gave himself no more that 40% winning chances. Nearly every other expert and chess historians favors Fischer. A recent analysis published by Chessbase predicted an overwhelming victory for Fischer (https://en.chessbase.com/post/fischer-vs-karpov-in-1975-who-would-have-won). To simply cite only Kasparov and Karpov - neither of which would have been exactly impartial on the matter - is certainly misleading. 89.19.79.30 (talk) 22:59, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

For sure we can add other expert opinions, but they need to be sourced. Can you give a source for Kasparov admitting to being biased against Fischer? I am not sure about that Chessbase article, which is simply a statistical analysis based on the assumption that their ratings at the time were accurate (incidentally the rating difference is smaller than that of Carlsen - Karjakin in 2016, when I - also in a statistics presentation - confidently predicted Carlsen would easily!). Adpete (talk) 02:59, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

So for wikipedia standards, one man's opinion (authoritative but also biased) carries more weight than statistical analysis? What about the most recent and comprehensive computer analysis done by IRIT in 2017? (https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Comparison_of_top_chess_players_throughout_history#Markovian_Model) This study used Stockfish 10 running on a supercomputer (far stronger than any human) and analyzed 26000 games played between world champions, building a statistical model for each player based on a Markovian interpretation. According to that, Fischer's winning percentages would be 55% when playing black and 56% when playing white. True, it compares Fischer of 1971 and Karpov of 1988, but according to that analysis Karpov's peak was 1988, not 1975. 2001:BB6:78A5:C600:1DDA:A7F9:F46A:BA41 (talk) 10:35, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Championship match

"The delegates voted in favor of Fischer's 10-win proposal, but rejected the 9–9 clause as well as the possibility of an unlimited match."

According to the New York Times, FIDE only rejected the 9-9 clause:

> By a vote of 37 to 33 the congress accepted Mr. Fischer's insistence on an unlimited number of games with the winner the first player to score 10 victories in a match in which draws would not count. This action represented a concession by the federation, which had rejected Fischer's demand at its previous congress in Nice last year, when a 36‐game limit was established. But by a vote of 35 to 32, with three abstentions, the delegates rejected Mr. Fischer's demand that in the event the players arrived at a 9‐9 tie, the match would be declared a draw, the prize money would be split and Mr. Fischer would retain his title. Rcaetano (talk) 07:41, 5 July 2022 (UTC)