Anatoly Karpov, 3723 chess games to download

Anatoly Karpov Yevgenyevich (born May 23, 1951) is the twelfth world champion and one of the greatest of our sport.

After getting the world champion title with no fight in 1975 -because Bobby Fischer failed to show up to defend his title-, he began a flurry of activity as trying to prove he was really deserving of the award. And boy, he did it! From 1975 to 1985 he was the undisputed best player in the world, and throughout his chess career can be counted 160! first places in international tournaments against the strongest opposition of the world.

The appearance of Garry Kasparov at the scene made him fall to second place worldwide, but until the early nineties, Karpov was a tough opponent for the championship of the world, always losing matches by a single point, or tying the match; as example of this was Sevilla in 1987, where the tied match allowed Kasparov retaining the title, because he was already the World Champion.

As Seirawan said: “Nobody knows how strong Karpov was, it was needed a Kasparov to defeat him”.

He was described as a “boa constrictor” due to his style, a solid positional understanding, converting the slightest advantage into a victory. He is compared with Capablanca, and not by choice: Capablanca´s selected games was Karpov’s favorite book in his youth.

The Yugoslav grandmaster Lubomir Ljubojevic once said: “Karpov, as Capablanca, knows. We … we just rehearse.”

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You may download his chess games in pgn and cbv formats, but I strongly recommend cbv because the games are categorized by openings, tactics, strategy, endgames, etc etc…

Bon appetite!