Carl Ja­cobs

At the high­est lev­el, the game of chess is a dead­ly se­ri­ous busi­ness but, thank heav­en, it can al­so be hi­lar­i­ous­ly fun­ny. The his­to­ry of world cham­pi­onship chess, in fact, is "re­lieved" by sev­er­al lu­di­crous episodes, some of which may seem to re­veal the quirky side of the ge­nius­es who dom­i­nat­ed it. This week, Dou­ble Rooks has de­cid­ed to take a com­ic break af­ter some re­cent "heavy jam­ming over the Olympiad and FIDE pres­i­den­tial elec­tions." And re­count­ing the hu­mor­ous sto­ry of Vik­tor Ko­rch­noi's 1978 world cham­pi­onship match against Ana­toly Kar­pov in the Philip­pines just seems to fill the bill. As Gar­ry Kas­parov tells it in his book, How Life Im­i­tates Chess, ten­sions be­tween the two com­bat­ants were at a peak even be­fore the match be­gan. The "hat­ed de­fec­tor" Ko­rch­noi was chal­leng­ing the full might of the So­vi­et ma­chine and its cham­pi­on Kar­pov. "Count­less pet­ty protests were filed by both sides be­fore they start­ed the first game. They ar­gued about the flags on the ta­ble, the height and style of the chairs, the colour of yo­gurt Kar­pov ate dur­ing the games. "But none of these were as bizarre as the sto­ry of Dr Vladimir Zukhar, a psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor who came to Baguio City as part of Kar­pov's en­tourage."

What­ev­er his mo­tive or pur­pose, Zukhar sat in the au­di­ence and main­tained a di­rect and in­tense stare at Ko­rch­noi dur­ing every game of the world cham­pi­onship. His as­so­ci­a­tion with Kar­pov and his dis­con­cert­ing mien led the su­per­sti­tious Ko­rch­noi and his over­pro­tec­tive team to sus­pect foul play of a su­per­nat­ur­al kind. Zukhar was ac­cused of be­ing a para­psy­chol­o­gist who was at­tempt­ing to use his spe­cial men­tal pow­ers to dis­rupt Ko­rch­noi's con­cen­tra­tion. To thwart this pos­si­ble tele­path­ic in­tru­sion, Ko­rch­noi's team de­mand­ed that Zukhar not be al­lowed to sit too close to the stage. But the So­vi­ets fought every re­quest and re­spond­ed with their own de­mands. "Thus be­gan a bizarre es­capade that saw Zukhar chang­ing seats dai­ly, of­ten flanked by mem­bers of Ko­rch­noi's del­e­ga­tion," Kas­parov re­lat­ed. "Pri­or to game 17 of the match, Ko­rch­noi even re­fused to play un­less Zukhar moved fur­ther back, a protest that cost the chal­lenger eleven min­utes on his clock, time he could have lat­er used when he found him­self in se­vere time trou­ble." To make the episode even more laugh­able, Ko­rch­noi lat­er brought in his own "para­psy­chol­o­gist, neu­rol­o­gist and hyp­no­tist" to com­bat Kukhar's pow­ers. "The saga con­tin­ued in sim­i­lar fash­ion through­out the match," Kas­parov re­port­ed.

"Was it all pos­tur­ing? Or is it re­al­ly pos­si­ble that two of the great­est chess play­ers on the plan­et, and their clos­est as­so­ciates, were dis­tract­ed by such sideshows dur­ing the most im­por­tant match of their ca­reers?" Kar­pov won the fi­nal game–with Zukhar sit­ting up front–to win the 32-game match by a sin­gle point. Kas­parov says he of­ten won­der how much bet­ter Ko­rch­noi would have done if he hadn't in­vest­ed so much en­er­gy re­spond­ing to Kar­pov's provo­ca­tions and spec­u­lat­ing about whether Kar­pov was re­ceiv­ing se­cret mes­sages in his yo­gurt. "In­ci­den­tal­ly," Kas­parov con­cludes, "Kar­pov's first vic­to­ry came in game eight, af­ter he star­tled his op­po­nent–and the fans–by re­fus­ing to shake Ko­rch­noi's hand be­fore the game. An­oth­er psy­cho­log­i­cal gam­bit well played?" If we sub­scribe to Kas­parov's view that life im­i­tates chess, then we may well ex­pect that, on the broad­er chess­board of life, gam­bits of a psy­cho­log­i­cal na­ture would at some time be played against us to con­fuse, to cre­ate doubt, even to de­rail us from pur­su­ing a cer­tain project or course of ac­tion. Re­act­ing as Ko­rch­noi did is cer­tain­ly not the best an­swer. We must be able to recog­nise the psy­cho at­tack for what it is and be men­tal­ly strong enough to deal with it at the same lev­el.