Vienna Game

At master level play, e4 and d4 have the same win rate as white; d4 does get more draws, but it does so by taking away black wins, not white wins.

Most GMs only try to go for a draw when playing Black since conventional wisdom is that White always has an inherent advantage with having the first move.

Turqoise bicycle shoe fins actualize radishes greenly.

>When asked if Viktor Korchnoi deserved to be world champion, Boris Spassky replied "No. Absolutely not. He had no style of his own."

I met Korchnoi at a NYC chess club in the early 2000s. I respect him as a player, but he was a dick and he only got worse with age. He accused me of being a KGB spy, this being over a decade since the USSR ceased to exist.

There's a lot of stories about him throwing the pieces down and ranting in disgust when some some young player beat him--it was clear that this was more than his ego could stand. I gotta give him credit for sheer durability--his FIDE rating was over 2600 well into his 70s.

You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone over 70 who retained their chess skills as well as Korch did. A lot of guys were still very strong in their 50s like Botvinnik and Alekhine, and Fischer was rated over 2600 when he had the rematch with Spassky in the early 90s. Also Lasker won the 1937 Leningrad tournament at 67, but for being over 70...Korchnoi had to be one for the record books.

Quit your bitching.

Lasker did win a major tournament at 67, that is true, though he retired afterwards and didn't play seriously in his 70s, but then he also lived back when medical treatment was very limited compared to today. Capablanca went at only 53 from lethally high blood pressure, a condition that is easily treated nowadays. Smyslov and Reshevsky were still actively playing in their 70s but I don't think they were as good as Korchnoi.

Also Fischer was just shy of 50 when he played that rematch with Spassky. Actually his performance there was remarkable not so much for his age (49 is a long way from geezerdom) but because he hadn't done any serious chess events for 20 years.

Reshevsky didn't play as much as Korchnoi in his later years but he did tie for third place in the US closed championship in the early 80s when he was about 70. That was a strong tournament with a lot of good players in it, Seriwan, Benko, Browne, a couple Soviet emigres, etc.

Why do you lie? I told this story a couple of threads back, and I can remember that it was the Manhattan Chess Club, not just an "NYC" chess club, and that it was 2002.

It's not quite a fair comparison because Korchnoi played all the time and remained very active until almost the end of his life. Lasker didn't play nearly as many events. Actually it's almost unfair in a way how he could take breaks from chess for literally years, then come back and win big events. Then again, the overall competition Lasker faced was stronger than the players that Korchnoi faced. Going by the FIDE rating system, Lasker was #1 from the 1890s through the 1920s, a period spanning about 35 years, and he was world champion for 27 of them. For comparison, Korchnoi made #1 for a mere four months in his whole 60+ year career.

Lasker had a full-time career as a mathematics professor--he seems to have gone back into chess whenever he got bored or wanted money. For example, he announced his retirement from chess after finally losing the title to Capablanca in 1921, then came back just two years later apparently because hyperinflation in Germany blew out his life savings.

If you go by FIDE ratings, the four best 70+ year olds in history were Reshevsky, Korchnoi, Smyslov, and Najdorf.

Blackburne was also quite formidable into his old age. He beat a 27 year old Nimzowich when he was 72 at the St. Petersburg 1914 tournament, and he was doing blindfold sims well into his 70s.

chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1604728

Beat a 17 year old Caruana at 80. This is definitely one for the record books.

Korchnoi always played Fischer extremely well, one reason being his French Defense fetish (Fischer as White always struggled with the French Defense). The other factor being that Korchnoi simply wasn't afraid of Fischer at all unlike many players.

Quit life my dude