Look at the memorable photo taken at the opening of the World Chess Championship in Lausanne in 1998. The match for the champion’s title was full of drama. It was the true culmination of the championship. In the first games, the rivals struck everyone with an incredible number of sacrificed pieces. In the sharpest Meran Variation of Semi-Slav Defence, Karpov amazed everyone by sacrificing a bishop for two pawns. He did it on the 17th move. Anand defended himself and the natural outcome of the game could be a draw.However, on the 26th move, Anand unexpectedly attacked and sacrificed first one rook and then another! Karpov's reaction was stunning! He in his turn sacrificed the queen! And as it turned out, his sacrifices were justified. While Vichy's sacrifices were meaningless and that’s why he lost the draw. The game came down to a technically won ending. Eventually, Karpov's two rooks, opposed by Anand’s queen, turned his pawns into queens.
No less interesting and fascinating was the second game. Karpov completely outplayed his rival in the Spanish party, wittily sacrificed quality and arranged a very dangerous pair of pawns: "c" and "d". The champion was supposed to win, but at the crucial moment, as the chess players say, he "turned away": on the 34th move, the black knight got to the winning position on e2, followed by the black queen's rebound on e8. As a result, white managed to win the game it was about to lose.
Karpov did not sleep that night; he was not allowed to think that the game was lost, that the score could be 2:0, after which the match was almost over... Therefore, the third was actually a tacitly offered time out. Ananda's fans were upbeat: Vichy had to play white twice in the remaining three games.
In the fourth game, the ‘Madras Tiger’ resembled a new-born kitten. He was playing so poorly that he managed to get the strategically losing position after 18 moves! Karpov said after the match that he was struck by Anand’s positional illiteracy.
The situation has become critical for Vichy. He had to win the last game "on request"! However, it was almost impossible for Anand to do this with Karpov. But he did it! Vichy managed a draw in the fifth game. And he won the sixth one. The score was tied! Not too bad for a "dead tiger»?!
And then the tie break began. Two 25-minute games were to be played first, then... In the first game, Karpov had to play white. He chose a closed circuit, which the older generation chess players used to call the "Jersey debut".
As Ilyumzhinov observed in the evening, at that moment, Vichy could stand up, go to his own fenced-in corner, drink juice or water there, then come back and win in thirty seconds. Or not to do this, but to follow the advice of his coach Ubilava: to sit on his hands while calmly and coolly looking at the chess board for about ten minutes. The way a real live tiger looks at a deer for dinner.
What Vichy did next will probably be included in psychiatry textbooks as an illustration to the chapter on "being temporarily insane." He did something unimaginable: he sacrificed everything he could and managed to lose the game!
In the second game, Anand played white, but ... Grandmaster Anand was not there. He was absent in a deep knockout....
Thus, Karpov is the winner of the first FIDE World Cup Knockout Championship.
Then there was a colourful closing, a performance by the Kalmykia folklore ensemble, a ballet by Maurice Bejart, welcome speeches, a cocktail reception, top models and top politicians...
