Korchnoi

Viktor Korchnoi was born in Leningrad in 1931 and became one of the most persistent rivals within the Soviet elite. He won four Soviet championships and appeared in the Candidates stage ten times. The Candidates process selects the challenger for the world title.

In 1974 he lost the Candidates final to Anatoly Karpov by one point. That contest was not yet a title match; it decided who would challenge Bobby Fischer. After leaving the Soviet Union in 1976, Korchnoi won two consecutive cycles and did face Karpov for the World Chess Championship in 1978 and 1981. He lost both contests, although the first was extremely close.

His play was marked by resistance and counterattack. To counterattack is to answer an opponent's pressure and threats by creating threats of your own rather than only defending. Korchnoi found resources in difficult positions and continued posing hard decisions even when his position was worse. He remained world-class for decades and kept competing long after nearly all of his contemporaries had retired.

Three struggles against Karpov

The distinction between 1974 and the two later matches matters when following his career. In 1974 the prize was still the right to challenge reigning champion Bobby Fischer. By Baguio 1978, Korchnoi was competing after leaving the Soviet Union. He fell behind by five wins to two in a match requiring six victories. He recovered to five wins each, then lost the decisive 32nd game. Counting wins describes that comeback more clearly than the total score, which also includes draws.

His victory in Game 31 reveals something the label of fighter can conceal: he could conduct sustained strategic pressure. He stabilized the queenside, established a knight on a strong square and prepared a central break. He then had to work through a rook ending. The result came from connected decisions about space, activity and king access rather than a single combination. Jonathan Speelman's analysis follows this transformation without pretending that the entire game was winning from the outset.

Defending with active resources

Korchnoi's resilience was not simply a matter of waiting for mistakes. Accepting an uncomfortable position requires separating immediate threats from pressure that can still be tolerated, retaining pieces that can create problems and calculating when priorities change. This provides a useful way to study his games: note which opposing threat each decision addresses and which possibility it keeps available for his own side.

Counterattack also describes only part of his chess. His command of endings appears in his own game collections and Practical Rook Endings. In rook endings an active piece can matter more than a tidy-looking pawn formation. Cutting off the king, attacking from behind and retaining checking distance are resources worth following throughout a sequence, not merely at its final diagram.

A career that kept producing results

Korchnoi won the 2006 World Senior Championship and the 2009 Swiss Championship at the age of 78. At Gibraltar in 2011 he defeated Fabiano Caruana with Black. These concrete achievements explain his longevity better than treating it merely as an age-related curiosity. He died in 2016. His games span distinct generations of chess and show how one competitor adapted his repertoire and decisions to very different opponents.