nament favourite, Carlsen, was lingering back in fourth
place, having sensationally lost two of his four games
to that point.
Starstruck in Olympia
(continued from the front cover)
Let’s be honest: I’m not a frequent chess spectator. My
last visit to a grandmaster tournament – which also
happened to be my first – was in October 1985, when
by chance I was taking a few days’ holiday in
Montpellier, France at the same time as the Candidates
Tournament and decided to go along. Among the stars
were three former world champions (Vasily Smyslov,
Mikhail Tal and Boris Spassky), the eventual winners
and the strongest Soviet challengers to the KarpovKasparov hegemony (Yusupov, Vaganyan and
Sokolov), the great hope of the West (Jan Timman)
and a certain young English grandmaster called Nigel
Short.
Before play began for the day in the Classic itself, the
ECF’s very own Adam Raoof gave me a tour of the
facilities. It was a genuine thrill to stand on the main
stage facing the large auditorium which shortly would
be filled to capacity with several hundred absorbed
spectators. The four boards were placed in front of a
giant screen, on which the moves of the games would
be displayed thanks to the wonders of the sensory
chessboards in common use at grandmaster events
these days. Behind the screen, some of the tournament’s many officials would be making sure that the
various feeds worked smoothly, keeping everyone at
the venue and online in touch with the moves as they
happened. Adam told me that Vladimir Kramnik liked
to wander around backstage during his game, staring at
the projected image of the games on the back of the
screen.
And Victor Korchnoi.
Victor Korchnoi during his second LCC simul
Elsewhere in the conference centre, an entire chess
festival was taking place. Alongside the elite tournament, hundreds of amateurs were enjoying the opportunity to compete in a range of events – standard play,
rapid and blitz – while desperately hoping that simply
being in the same building as Anand et al. would infuse
their play with just a little chessboard magic. In its way,
the sight of so many people, young and old, drawn
together by a shared love of chess was as inspiring to
me as the glamour of the Classic. To a veteran of
weekend chess such as me, it was abundantly clear that
the festival spirit had transformed all of these events
into something quite out of the ordinary.
At 2 o’clock, the Classic got underway. Round 5 saw,
in effect, an England versus the Rest of the World
match, as the English players found themselves paired
against the four overseas players:
Anand – McShane
Nakamura – Short
Adams – Kramnik
Howell – Carlsen
Korchnoi was not having the best of times in
Montpellier, but I still remember what a thrill it was to
see the great man in action on stage. The start of my
serious interest in chess coincided with Korchnoi’s first
post-defection assault on the world championship in
1977 – my very first chess magazine included a report
on his quarter final match against Petrosian – and I had
spent the following years in wonder at the superhuman
exploits of “Victor the Terrible”. If I could be said to
have had a “chess hero” at that time, Victor Korchnoi
was that hero.
Arriving at the impressive Olympia Conference Centre
in Kensington, I was reminded of that earlier event.
Once again, the quality of the field was tremendously
strong: World Champion Viswanathan Anand, world
number one Magnus Carlsen, former world champion
Vladimir Kramnik, American star and world number
15, Hikaru Nakamura, along with the top four English
players, Michael Adams, Nigel Short, Luke McShane
and David Howell. The excitement and sense of occasion were palpable, not least because on the day I was
there (round 5), a Brit – Luke McShane – was sharing
the lead with the World Champion, while the pre-tour-
Round 5
5