Evil-Doer: Half a Century with Viktor Korchnoi, by Genna Sosonko - A Review

Evil-Doer: Half a Century with Viktor Korchnoi by Genna Sosonko. Elk & Ruby 2018.

These days it seems like all the top grandmasters have friendly relations with one another and nobody really appears to dislike anyone else. They play blitz, rapid and classical all year round (pandemics permitting) and they all get along very well. They give post-game interviews and are happy to appear on the "Banter Blitz" sessions on a certain rival website, where we can tune in to their thoughts as they play and we can enjoy their sometimes witty comments. Everyone is available to play or comment instantly - such is the nature of social media today. This has immense benefits, but it also has a rather depressing side-effect: that what is always available isn't always valuable. Perhaps it's just a generational phenomenon and this flattening effect where everything is available "always already" (to cite Martin Heidegger) is actually a wonderful thing which adds to the beauty and romance of chess. But I doubt it.

 Viktor Korchnoi with Genna Sosonko, Riga 1970

   Reading this book by Korchnoi's sometime second (and long time friend) Genna Sosonko gives us an impression of a man who was often utterly contrary and frequently downright unpleasant. At the same time it's extremely refreshing to go back to the recent past and read about a chess player who was (perhaps understandably) paranoid and (to put it mildly) less than flattering about his colleagues. I don't believe there has ever been a player before or since who was so absolutely and passionately devoted to the game of chess.

   This will be a relatively brief look at Sosonko's book about his friend, Viktor Korchnoi. It is more a memoir of a friendship than a biography. Sosonko has the gift of bringing his subjects to life, as anyone who has ever read (for example) his excellent books Russian Silhouettes or The Reliable Past will know. In the past, before we knew every thought and every action of everyone alive via Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, there were things (incredible as it may seem) that we didn't know about famous chess players. When Korchnoi's autobiography, Chess is My Life, appeared in the West in 1977, its depiction of the life of a top professional player was a revelation. The transmission of information (or knowledge) may have been slow, but the results were of more value. 

The young Viktor Korchnoi

   For the uninitiated, Viktor Korchnoi was a very strong Russian (I suppose technically we must say 'Soviet') grandmaster who was frequently a candidate for the world title, and played two World Championship matches against his arch-rival, Anatoly Karpov. In their first match in Baguio City in the Philippines in 1978, Korchnoi - who had defected from the Soviet Union in 1976, and who was twenty years older than Karpov - was one game away from becoming the World Champion. After a dramatic finish in which he won three games out of four to equalize 5-5, Korchnoi lost the very next game (game 32 of the match). 

   An exhausted Karpov returned to a hero's welcome in the Soviet Union. Korchnoi left the Philippines to give a simultaneous display in Hong Kong, then flew to Buenos Aires to play top board for Switzerland at the Chess Olympiad. He received the gold medal for his performance with the best score of any top board.

Karpov-Korchnoi, World Championship 1978         

   I really admired Korchnoi's attitude after such a close finish: he just wanted to play more chess and never looked back. Sosonko suggests this had something to do with Korchnoi's experience as a young boy when he was stranded in the Siege of Leningrad (September 1941 until January 1944) during World War II: survival is all, the past is the past, the next battle is the most important battle.

   I'd like to say a few words about Korchnoi the chess player. He had a rather complicated style: he specialized in grabbing material and withstanding attacks to emerge with a pawn ahead. (Of course, this is a slightly simplistic interpretation.) He was a great master of defence and counter attack. I studied all of his Candidates matches from the 1970s in detail - I learned a lot about tenacity in defence and how to create problems for your opponents when you stand worse and even (perhaps especially) when you are lost. (Forgive the immodesty, but I once came second in an Open tournament with 4/5, having been lost in every single game; after one win, I overheard somebody say "Does this guy specialize in lost positions?" No, but I was channelling my "inner Korchnoi".)

   His play as Black in the French Tarrasch (especially in the 1974 Candidates Final against Karpov) remains a model of how to handle positions with an IQP (isolated queen's pawn). Even Karpov couldn't break him down in this line. (One recalls an anecdote from Korchnoi's autobiography: "I was told a story of how once Tal and Vaganian arrived back from the Yugoslavia-USSR match. A car from the Communist Youth Organization Central Committee was awaiting them by the airport entrance. 'We're going straight to Karpov,' said the executive, 'he's having trouble against the French Defence'. And they both went.") (Korchnoi, p.106.)

 Rafael Vaganian (l) and Mikhail Tal (r) with Evgeny Vladimirov  

   In a well-known quotation, Korchnoi wrote about his approach to the game: "But if, in my youth, the desire to defend was driven by mischief, a love of risk, then in the subsequent years defence became my serious, practical and psychological weapon." It was fascinating to discover that Korchnoi decided to re-learn the way he played much later:

   "Middle-aged, he decided to review his approach to the game, to become broader minded, to throw off his focus on material, to learn to play positions with the initiative, with sacrifices and with material imbalances. He managed to do this in the prime of a successful career. Only professionals are capable of appreciating the gigantic effort that Korchnoi made." (Sosonko, p.187.)

   Sosonko's book focuses, perhaps inevitably, on the latter part of Korchnoi's life. His health was failing and, with it, his chess ability. Korchnoi found this very difficult to bear. Other players retire, become honoured guests at tournaments, and don't work at the game any more. Korchnoi never stopped working on his chess and always wanted to play another game. He did not want to be an honoured guest - he wanted to play in the tournament. His passion for chess is shown in the number of games he played over his long career: 4,561 games - significantly more than any other professional player. At the age of 75 he was still in the top one hundred players in the world. He may have been unpleasant, paranoid, curmudgeonly, obnoxious and suspicious, but he was also a unique player. 

Korchnoi had a lifetime equal score against Fischer

   This book also goes into his relationships with other top players - apart from Karpov, his rivalries with Petrosian and Spassky are covered (especially the notorious 1977/78 Candidates Semi-Final in Belgrade, which was used by the Soviets to gain as much information as possible about psychological warfare in preparation for the World Championship match with Karpov).

  The notorious "match of hate": Korchnoi-Spassky, Belgrade 1977/78

   Korchnoi's relations with Bobby Fischer were generally cordial, and Fischer had a high opinion of Korchnoi as a player. They met in Pasadena in 1977, and Korchnoi describes a man who was clearly missing chess immensely. Korchnoi later made the mistake of mentioning that he'd met up with Fischer, whereupon Fischer wrote him a letter (reprinted in full in the book, p.101) reprimanding him for this. Actually, Fischer is quite reasonable, and doesn't cut Korchnoi off completely - he merely asks him to "strictly adhere" to their agreement. Given that most people would've been dropped entirely, this letter is an indication of the respect Fischer had for Korchnoi. Sosonko thinks Korchnoi's English may have been a factor in his misunderstanding of Fischer here. But Korchnoi thought it was the end and the two never met again.

   There was a rare comment from Fischer about the famous 31st game of the Korchnoi-Karpov match, which Korchnoi won to level the score at 5-5: "It was unbelievable that Karpov lost that totally drawn rook ending." Well, it was quite a complicated endgame - Korchnoi said it was the most complicated rook endgame he'd ever played, and analyzed it in depth in his superb book Practical Rook Endings (Edition Olms, 2002, pp.60-81). The final word (probably) on this complex endgame is given by Vladimir Akopian in this article: https://www.chess.com/article/view/anti-chess 

 Viktor Korchnoi 1931-2016  

   In many ways Evil-Doer is quite a sad book. Korchnoi was even suspicious of his wife Petra spying on him, which perhaps confirms Einstein's well-known view of chess: "Chess holds its master in its own bonds, shackling the mind and brain so that the inner freedom of the very strongest must suffer." (Incidentally, Einstein was writing here about his friend Emanuel Lasker, Korchnoi's chess hero.) The chessboard breeds suspicion and paranoia: after all, your opponent is out to get you. But when this bleeds into your relationships with other people, then there is something seriously wrong. For Korchnoi, "Chess is my life" wasn't just the title of his autobiography - it was really true.

   Yet perhaps Korchnoi's life and career exemplify another famous saying, trite as it may be: "Life's too short for chess."