If Fischer would played Karpov for the World Champion, who would win?

Well, this doesn't always work. For instance, Alexei Shirov had a positive score against Kramnik before his match with Kasparov. Kasparov had 10-0 decisive games score against Shirov, yet Kasparov lost the match to Kramnik.

In chess as in boxing, sometimes styles make fights.

Usually, chessgames.com is a very good resource for such information.

Geller had a positive score against Spassky in tournaments, but lost 6 games to 0 in 2 Candidates' matches against Spassky.....

JamieDelarosa wrote:

Personally, there hasn't been a "real" match for the championship since 1993, or maybe 1995, of you think best-of-20 is sufficient.

The FIDE is a mess.

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Sadly, I agree.

WCC's should be best of 24. Andshould only be held every two years, at a maximum.

As champion, Karpov won over a hundred major tournaments, during his reign.

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While Fischer was champion, he won, well, zero.

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Setting aside the question of who was the better player in 1975 for a moment, I really believe Karpov was the better champion.

He actually played chess.

fischer would win. very likely he will often refuse a draw offers by karpov. karpov would be replaced by other russian players in hope of a draw accepted from fishcer. sounds pretty scared?

fischer became the champion of the world in the face of the mighty soviet machine. bobby was  conscripted into the service of the american state dept to fight the cold war but in his development as a chess player he got nowhere near the help that was given to the likes of karpov by the soviets...bobby was a hero who took on the world on his own terms and emerged victorious.. his story is truly epic and for this reason he must be considered as a great champion who had the raw talent to beat any player who has ever lived.

Trotter

Granted.

Fischer was an amazing challenger. One of the best who ever lived.

Right up to the part where he got the title. Then he just seemed to fall off the face of the earth.

Bobby was like Alexander the great who likewise found that he had no more worlds to conquer. Had there been a championship of the solar system to go for I'm sure Bobby would have found the motivation to carry on but ,as it was ,he climbed his Everest and  found that the view from the summit was not to his liking so he came back down the mountain.

Except there was another world to conquer.

And if Alexander had been smart, he would have settled for that, and turned around once he reached the Indian border, and quit, the way Fischer did.

Instead, Alexander decided to try for one more world, and that proved his undoing.

Not being an expert on Alexander's conquests I couldn't say whether or not he was wise or foolhardy to try for another conquest. I do know though that the quote I cited can be used metaphorically to describe what psychological phenomena can affect those that have scaled the highest of heights as Bobby Fischer did..Bobby acheived all he needed to in my humble opinion and they will still be talking about him 200 years into the future maybe even 2000 years into the future.

Kasparov in his series on his great predecessors said, iirc, that Fischer would have won in 1975 but Karpov would have won 1978.

trotters64 wrote:

varelse

Not being an expert on Alexander's conquests I couldn't say whether or not he was wise or foolhardy to try for another conquest. I do know though that the quote I cited can be used metaphorically to describe what psychological phenomena can affect those that have scaled the highest of heights as Bobby Fischer did..Bobby acheived all he needed to in my humble opinion and they will still be talking about him 200 years into the future maybe even 2000 years into the future.

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Fair enough

"Bobby acheived all he needed to in my humble opinion"

He sure did enough to always be considered one of the greats, it's just when people see his achievements as enough to rank him as greater than Lasker or Kasparov that those career achievements pale a bit in comparison. Short said about Kasparov that still after numerous title matches and all those years as #1 he saw every tournament as a competition against the greatest players of the past. To Fischer beating Taimanov, Larsen, Petrosian and Spassky once was enough. Kasparov wanted to beat Karpov, he wanted to do it many times, and all the other top players, for decades.

The winner of the match would probably depend on how the match would be structured; still, for some reason, holding onto the FIDE World Championship, even at that time, was not an easy thing to do. Unless there was some weird stipulation in the match, I would have favored Karpov to defeat Fisher.

The real "hero" of the Spassky/Fischer 72 match was Boris Spassky. He was a man of his word. A man of honor. And because of that he lost his title. When Fischer refused to show up in Reykjavik on time and completely blew off the opening ceremony their hosts arraigned(an insult not only to Spassky but to their hosts as well), Moscow told Spassky to get on a plane and come home. But he refused until he was certain Fischer wouldn't show. He had given his word to play. Later, when Fischer refused to play game 3 unless it was under his terms Spassky could have simply refused and Fischer would have forfeit. You have to give the man credit. Boris Spassky was most certainly an honorable person.

Had the champion been anyone else at the time, Fischer wouldn't have become champion in 72. The match likely wouldn't have even taken place.

Karpov simply played chess, Fisher was looking for messy things to find some lame excuses (money, colours of table-clothes, noises and whatever else) for not being able to simply play chess as it is. It's very likely that Bobby, with his hot and uneven temper, did have reasons to fear the possible defeat. Karpov was ready to play that match, and he had no fears whether he would lose or win that match, Karpov was mentally much more stable than Fisher. Fisher was not ready to play that match, he was not ready to face the possible chances - that is the chance either to win or to be defeated. If Bobby had been sure of his victory (and if he had had no fears of being defeated) - he would have played that match. The chances of that match were probably 45% for Karpov's win and 55% for Fisher's win, but probably that chance-estimation score was the thing that Fisher was in no case ready to accept, preferring to be defeated without struggle.

Saying again, this is probably one of the greatest pitties in chess that the chess world was deprived of the possibility to watch the 1975 World Championship match, really regardless whoever would have won there, the battle itself should have been much more than "simply exciting"

Very tough question.

Their match was scheduled for 1975, 3 years after Fischer had defeated Spassky. Fischer by then had stopped playing serious tournament chess for 3 years already, so he would've been a little rusty.

Karpov, however, was on a roll. He was younger than Fischer and it was like the Soviet Union had engineered him to beat Fischer, which was their main aim after Spassky's loss (to retake the World Champion title).

Karpov already had a string of successes, winning the World Junior Chess Championship in 1969 and other top-level tournaments, safe to say, he was peaking.

Fischer, as I said before, was rusty no doubt. Although of course he was still a top chess player  and had more experience than Karpov.

To conclude, I would say that Karpov would've won if the match had gone forward due to Fischer's recent inactivity and the determination of Karpov compiled with the massive amounts of support he received from the Soviet Union. 

Fischer could have played and saved all this speculation