Saturday
Jul282012
Korchnoi's Endgame?
Saturday, July 28, 2012 at 3:14PM
This isn't good. It looks like the hitherto seemingly ageless wonder, Viktor Korchnoi, is finally really slowing down (HT: Thomas Richter). His performance in the Swiss Championship was a disaster, and he was listless and playing in a wheelchair. He is 81, it's true, but even a year and half or two ago he was still vigorous and playing excellent chess, even managing to defeat Fabiano Caruana in last year's Gibraltar tournament.
We all slow down at some point, and must finally give up the ghost and meet our maker. But I for one am hoping Korchnoi can rally at least one more time and stick around the world chess scene a few years more.
tagged Viktor Korchnoi
Reader Comments (3)
Can anyone expand on the background of this?
Has Kortchnoi suffered a new illness?
Was he only playing in the Swiss Championship in an effort to get a board on the Swiss Team for the Olympics?
[DM: Hmm, you mean why is he playing if he felt in such bad condition? Maybe he had said "yes" before he felt so bad, and didn't want to back out. It's a good question.]
I think the only hope I have for Korchnoi (besides the selfish fantasy of wanting him to blow up the board a few more times before it's done) is that if he desires to play until it really is the end, that his love for the game over comes the inevitable loss of ability. We tend to experience ourselves as the last moments of a long journey and forget about the great adventures had along the way. It would be awful if his final few outing sullied his memories and joy of the game.
It's a pretty interesting phenomenon for those interested. You can imagine a great movie with the worst possible ending ... or a mediocre movie with a fantastic ending (see Adaptation for this exploration). Your memory of something tends to be focused on the final impression. (There's a medical study about colonoscopy patients that points out that a smoother final minute of the procedure practically erases memories of the misery of the prior moments ... and the converse seems to be true.
@Jordan Henderson: I cannot expand on the current background (while I pointed out the article, it was written by Stefan Löffler). For sure it wasn't to qualify for the Olympiad - he was on the Swiss team before the event but has now (obviously) been replaced by Richard Forster. It may be, as Dennis suggests, a desire to honor earlier commitments - has Korchnoi ever dropped out of an event? More generally, it may be unconditional love for chess; the article started with "Viktor Korchnoi often said he couldn't imagine a life without chess".
[DM: He did last year, though "dropping out" gives it a voluntary sound. For health reasons, he was told not to travel to St. Louis, where he was supposed to play a match with Ben Finegold. (It was the "undercard" to the Ponomariov-Nakamura match.]
An anecdote fom my own second-hand experience: Maybe five years ago, Dutch organizers invited Korchnoi for a one-day blitz tournament. To their slight surprise, he accepted and asked only a moderate appearance fee plus travel expenses (I won't mention the sum, it was less than what Timman asked at a later occasion). He explained to the organizers: "I still love to play chess but get few invitations these days; I happened to be free for today."