Korchnoi-Spassky 2.5-1.5 at half-time
Games 3 and 4 both ended in a draw and so Viktor Korchnoi still has a small lead in his match against Boris Spassky. The match in Elista will consist of eight games in total, and after four games the score is 2.5-1.5 for the oldest of the two legends.Photo © Official siteThe match between 10th World Champion Boris Spassky and former World Championship contender Viktor Korchnoi is the final event in the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the union between Kalmykia and Russia. The two play a total of eight games in Elista from December 17th until 27th, for a prize fund of US$ 20,000. The time control seems to be 90 minutes + 30 seconds per move.The third game was a Nimzo/Queen's Indian hybrid where the players left theory at an early stage. Spassky's positional a5-a4 move was an attempt to refute White's Qb3, but he might have regretted it later when Korchnoi had regrouped his king's knight to c3. After Korchnoi missed an opportunity to reach a favourable rook ending, Spassky easily drew the resulting rook ending. Yesterday in game 4 Korchnoi again employed the French Defence, just like in game 2 and in their famous match in Belgrade in 1977. Then he only went for the Winawer with 3...Bb4, but 32 years later his preferred move is 3...Nf6. At the press conference Korchnoi explained that he's working on a book on the French Defence (great news, in our opinion - how can it be anything else than an instant classic, like Uhlmann's Ein Leben Lang Französisch?) and therefore at the moment plays it without exception.Spassky didn't follow the current main line (4.e5) but chose 4.Bg5, and then seemed caught by surprise by Korchnoi's plan which delayed the thematical ...c5 pawn break. He played the new move 10.a4, which allowed the Black queen to b4. About ten moves later it was clear that White was not better, and so Spassky decided to repeat moves. Today is a rest day in Elista.Match score
Games 3 & 4
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Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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