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Karpov Teaches Isolated Pawn Strategy! - Best Of The 1980s - Korchnoi vs. Karpov, 1981

Karpov Teaches Isolated Pawn Strategy! - Best Of The 1980s - Korchnoi vs. Karpov, 1981

SamCopeland
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Anatoly Karpov is absolutely central to the story of chess in the 1980s. Karpov dominated the early half of the decade and played 5 (!) world chess championship matches in the 1980s - four of them against Garry Kasparov.

Karpov's other world championship opponent was Viktor Korchnoi. These fierce chess (and political) rivals contested many interesting and instructive games and a 1978 and 1981 world championship match. The following 9th match game from '81 showed the difference in skill clearly. Karpov won seemingly effortlessly as Black against the great Korchnoi.

Top 10 Games of the 1980s

Anatoly Karpov has won as many brilliant positional games as any player in chess history, but perhaps the following game is the most instructive he ever played. Karpov gives a perfect demonstration of how to play against an isolated pawn.

How to defeat an isolated pawn:

  1. Control the square in front of the pawn.
  2. Exchange as many minor pieces as possible.
  3. Double your heavy pieces to pressure the pawn and tie down your opponent's forces.
  4. If allowed, play a pawn break to pile up on the pinned piece and win a pawn.
  5. If prevented, seize the newly opened lines.

Annotations (and several comments from Karpov) are below. Be sure to check out Karpov's incredible book about his best games for complete annotations on this and many other games!

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SamCopeland
NM Sam Copeland

I'm the Head of Community for Chess.com. I earned the National Master title in 2012, and in 2014, I returned to my home state of South Carolina to start Strategery: Chess and Games. In late 2015, I began working for Chess.com and haven't looked back since.

You can find my personal content on Twitch , Twitter , and YouTube where I further indulge my love of chess.