This Week's ChessBase Show

After a couple of weeks with heavily tactical games, it's time to return to something a bit calmer. It also seems like a good time to pay tribute to the game's most prominent recent retiree, Garry Kasparov. In his announcement that he was retiring, he listed among his greatest games one that really surprised me, a game that I barely remembered. (Of course, Kasparov has played so many masterpieces, it's hard to remember them all.)

The game in question was the 19th in the 1985 Karpov-Kasparov match. (The game score can be seen here.) Kasparov, the challenger, was a game ahead with six to go, but as he recounts it didn't fully believe he was going to win the match at this point. In this important, pressure-filled context, Kasparov won a beautiful game; remarkably, one played in a style more closely associated with Karpov's style than his own. It was a convincing victory, and one which gave him both the confidence and the margin he needed to win the crown. In short, a great and important game!

Yet largely unknown. Thus, if I as a long-time Kasparov fan and great games connoisseur was only just aware of a game Kasparov singled out as one of his three most memorable, then I expect that the same will be true for many, perhaps most of my readers/listeners. So join me Monday night at 9 p.m. EST, and we'll take a look! As always, directions for watching the show can be found here, and a list of previous shows can be found here.