Karpov-Beliavsky, Tilburg 1986

Alexander Beliavsky was born December 17, 1953 in Lviv, Ukraine. He won the World Junior Championship in 1973 and the USSR Championship in 1974, 1980, 1987, and 1990. In 1983, Beliavsky lost to Garry Kasparov in a quarterfinal Candidates match. He moved to Slovenia and won the Vidmar Memorial there in 1999, 2001, 2003 (tied with Emil Sutovsky), and 2005. He is a composer of endgame studies, a chess trainer, and has the highest rating of active players his age or more. He is now rated 2621, four points higher than Anatoly Karpov, who is two years older. The game selected from 1986 has Beliavsky facing Karpov, who held the World Championship for ten years, until 1985.

Karpov-Beliavsky was played at Tilburg. There were eight leading players competing in a double round robin requiring fourteen games. The field and the results were: Beliavsky 8.5, Ljubojevic 8, Karpov, 7.5, Miles, 7, Timman 7, Portisch 7, Huebner 6.5, and Korchnoi 4.5. The top two finishers each won five games. Nobody else won more than three games. Nobody was undefeated. The difference between the top two was Beliavsky scoring two wins against Ljubojevic.

The opening of Karpov-Beliavsky was the Queen’s Gambit. Karpov opted for the Exchange Variation and developed a better game. Beliavsky resisted and when Karpov slipped, Beliavsky made sure that he fell.

Tilburg in the Netherlands was the site of an annual top level chess tournament from 1977-98. It was sponsored by Interpolis, an insurance company, from 1977 to 1994. It was not held in 1995. A new sponsor, Fontys Hogenscholen (a university), held the event from 1996 to 1998.