The Kibitzer 
by Tim Harding

Is Khalifman the real World Champion?

Occasionally, The Kibitzer (whose brief is deliberately left vague)
departs from opening theory and historical topics to write about current
issues in the chess scene. Last year's #23 (April 1998 - which you can
read in the Chess Caf‚ Archives) examined the situation concerning the
World Championship(s). Now, after last month's events in Las Vegas, it
is time for an update, so expect some controversy! 

In April 1998, I wrote that "nobody has the uncontestable right to be
regarded as World Chess Champion". Splendid as GM Alexander
Khalifman's surprise achievement was, in winning the FIDE Knockout
World Championship tournament in Vegas, I don't think that remark is
any less true than it was 19 months ago.

In fact, for the first time ever in chess history, we now have a "world
champion" who not only is not the world's best player but even accepts
publicly that this is the case! To see who is most widely regarded as the
world's strongest player, I refer you to FIDE's own July 1999 rating list
where one G. Kasparov sits at the top with 2851 compared with
Khalifman who is in 45th place with 2628. (Other leading figures whose
names have been bandied about in the world championship context
include Anand 2771, Kramnik 2760, Karpov 2700, Morozevich 2758
and Shirov 2734.)

Khalifman certainly proved very resourceful in this event. He lost his
very first game (to Barua of India) but equalised; then he lost the first
quickplay game but still emerged the winner. In round two he lost the
first game against the seeded Kamsky but again he won with White and
came through the quickplay. In round three he beat the teenager Asrian
from Armenia. 

The highest-rated player that Khalifman beat was Boris Gelfand (2713)
in round four. After two draws, this game was played at the rate of 25
minutes each.

Khalifman - Gelfand Sicilian Defence (B92) FIDE WCh KO Las Vegas,
11.08.1999

1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 d6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 Nf6 5 Nc3 a6 6 Be2 e5 7 Nb3 Be7 8
Be3 Be6 9 Nd5 Nbd7 10 Qd3 Bxd5 11 exd5 0-0 12 g4!

In a sharp opposite-side castling position, Khalifman gets his pawns
moving. This doesn't seem to be a very common or recommendable
variation for Black, but maybe Gelfand had found the following game in
his database and planned to improve12 Qd3 e4 13 Qd4 Nc5 14 h4 Nfd7
15 g5 f5 16 Qd2 Nxb3 17 axb3 Ne5 18 h5 Rc8 19 g6 hxg6 20 hxg6
Nxg6 21 Bh5 Nh4? (better 21...Ne5) 22 0-0-0 Ng2 23 Rdg1 f4? 24 Rxg2
fxe3 25 Qxe3 Rc7 26 Bg4 g5 27 Qxe4 1-0 A. Van der Wall-S. Tengely,
Kecskemet 1991.

12...Nc5 13 Nxc5 dxc5 14 0-0-0 e4 

DIAGRAM

Gelfand tries to get counterplay by giving up two pawns, to get control
of e5 and rupture the white king's pawn defences, and when this doesn't
succeed he also sacrifices the exchange. However, Khalifman repulses
the initiative and wins

15 Qd2 Bd6 16 g5 Nd7 17 h4 Ne5 18 h5 Rc8 19 Rh4 c4 20 Rxe4 c3 21
bxc3 Qa5 22 Kb1 Rxc3 23 Bd4 Rfc8 24 Bxc3 Rxc3 25 Qd4 

The white queen is now perfectly placed for attack and defence.

25...f6 26 gxf6 gxf6 27 f4 Bc5 28 Qa4 Qb6+ 29 Ka1 Nf7 30 Qe8+ Kg7
31 h6+ Nxh6 32 Qd7+ Nf7 33 Rb1 Qd8 34 Rxb7 Qxd7 35 Rxd7 Rxc2
36 Bh5 Ba3 37 Re1 Bb4 38 Rxf7+ Kh6 39 Rh1 1-0.

Khalifman then drew the second play-off game to move into round 5
where he comfortably despatched Judit Polgar, another player rated
higher than himself. He was proving very efficient with the white pieces. 

In the semifinal he met the Romanian L. Nisipeanu, even more of a
surprise qualifier than Khalifman himself, and took an early lead.
Nisipeanu equalised the match in regular time but once more the
quickplay went to the Russian. In the final against V. Akopian (only
slightly higher-rated than himself) Khalifman took the lead by winning
at last with Black. Then they each won with White before Khalifman
held a draw in the crucial game five. Now he only needed a draw with
White in the last game and he duly achieved this; in the whole event he
never lost when he had the first move. It was a performance that
Kasparov himself could have been proud of.

From the reports I have so far read, Khalifman is very modest about the
whole thing, referring to himself as an "amateur", and I wish him well.
Of course the circumstances and rules of play in Las Vegas were not
ideal, but the players got well paid. For FIDE President Kirsan
Ilyumzhinov in particular, and the chess world in general, the Vegas
event has one great advantage it spelled the end of Karpov's claims to be
World Champion (or almost...). While Karpov was still getting great
tournament results and a high rating, FIDE could live with him but his
recent decline of form and rating has put him clearly behind many
players of the younger generation. 

Of course it might have been better for FIDE, and chess in general, if
one of the very high-rated players such as Kramnik, Adams or Shirov
had won the event but the very structure of the knockout tournament
(partly the brevity of the mini-matches but especially the blitz tie-break)
was always likely to eliminate some of the main contenders. FIDE
played its tournament in the world centre of gambling, with casino rules,
and so they cannot complain that a surprise winner scooped the big pot.

Two players apart from Khalifman may have a claim to be regarded as
World Champion. Kasparov is one of them, of course; we will come to
him later in this article. At the time of writing, it is doubtful whether he
will find sponsorship money for his proposed match with Anand but
maybe the situation will change during the next few weeks.

Then there is Anatoly Karpov, the only other contender to have actually
been crowned world champion. It seems that Karpov does not accept that
Vegas was a legitimate championship and is considering legal action
against FIDE. This is because they changed the rule that applied in the
previous FIDE world knockout event, where he only had to defend his
title against the winner of the Groningen tournament, Anand. Karpov
won then, by the skin of his teeth, against an exhausted Anand but chose
not to participate in Vegas, where he would have had to enter the event
in the second knockout round.

Karpov first became World Champion way back in 1975 when Bobby
Fischer would not agree FIDE's terms to defend against him. Fischer
then went into a prolonged retirement, from which he emerged only once
to win a controversial re-match against Spassky in Serbia/Montenegro
defiance of U.N. sanctions against that country. Fischer, still regarding
himself as undefeated World Champion, now lives in Hungary. 

Karpov had won the Candidates Final the previous year, by the margin
of 3-2 (with 19 draws) against Viktor Korchnoi. This match was a
typical Soviet state-sponsored affair, guaranteed to hold interest over
several weeks because of the slower pace of life in those days and the
knowledgeable local audience in Moscow. However, it was a war of
attrition reminiscent of most of Botvinnik and Petrosian's matches in the
1950s and 1960s fascinating to the experts but unlikely to make
headlines in the West.

Karpov's first defence of the title came in 1978 in Baguio City,
Philippines, with an open-ended match to be won by the first player to
win 6 games; it took 32 games to achieve this result. Once more his
opponent was Korchnoi, now a defector from the USSR. The rules,
similar to those of the Alekhine-Capablanca match of 1927, were fair as
they gave no advantage to the champion Botvinnik had twice retained his
title in matches tied 12-12. 

This Cold War clash attracted tremendous publicity as Korchnoi, put up
a tremendous fight after conceding an early lead. With numerous off-the-
board wrangles about parapsychologists influencing the players from the
audience, and secret messages allegedly being passed to Karpov in tubs
of yogurt, the champion started to feel the strain and the match went to
sudden death at 5-5. However, Karpov had the next White and clinched
victory by 6-5 with 21 draws. 

The same rules applied for the 1981 title match in Merano, Italy. This
time Korchnoi, who had fought his way through the qualifiers again,
went down tamely and Karpov notched up the required six victories in
only 18 games.

You can see why FIDE wanted to change the system, especially in these
days when people want quick results. The head-to-head long-match
system meant that a contest could either be an anticlimax like Merino or
an open-ended endurance test like Baguio. Nobody involved (players,
organisers, journalists, sponsors) could estimate what they would be in
for, in terms of duration, expenses etc. The pace of play in these matches
- three games per week at most (lengthened by time-outs) - was also not
guaranteed to hold public interest.

The nadir of the match system was the first Karpov-Kasparov match
(1984-85) which was supposed to be for the first to six games, but went
to 48 games without result. Karpov was four up after nine games, scored
his fifth win in game 28 and twenty games later his lead was down to 5-
3. FIDE President Campomanes stopped the match and people have been
arguing ever since whose idea that was, whether it was justified and who
benefitted. I don't want to get into that, but many people think the
present malaise in the world chess scene dates to that occasion.

Because of complicated rules about re-match entitlements and the
outcome of new Candidates cycles, Karpov and Kasparov contested four
further matches. Kasparov won the title 13-11 in 1985 (Moscow, Sept.-
Nov.), successfully defended in 1986 (London/Leningrad), dramatically
won the last game to tie and retain his title in 1987 (Seville), and beat
Karpov again in 1990 (New York/Lyons).

The prospect of a sixth K-K match in 1993 was avoided when Nigel
Short broke the mold and earned the right to challenge Kasparov for the
world chess championship. At this point, disregarding Fischer's claims,
there was still only one World Chess Championship and one universally
recognised World Champion. 

It was Nigel Short's fateful phone call to Kasparov proposing a
breakaway from FIDE which changed all that, and this is why I consider
that Short - rather than Campomanes or anyone else except Kasparov
(who jumped at Short's idea) - bears much of the responsibility for the
mess we have today. I find it amazing that FIDE allowed Short to play in
Vegas; it is arguable that he should be banned from all their
championship events for life.

Most players in the past who have gone through a qualifying cycle and
earned a shot at the world title would have loved the package on offer to
Short in 1993. He could have had a huge home-town advantage in
Manchester, the nearest large city to the Lancashire town of Bolton
where he grew up, which had submitted the highest bid to FIDE for
hosting the match. This would have earned him tremendous goodwill in
British chess. He could have prepared for the match calmly and
maximised his chances of success. 

Short himself may say differently, but to the outside observer he seems
to have taken the view that he had little chance of victory anyway and
moreover that this match (even as a loser) gave him his one chance of a
big payday in his lifetime. So he rejected the Manchester deal,
telephoned his rival and initiated the split with FIDE that maximised the
big bucks and minimised his chances of success. The strain told in the
very first game, where (approaching a winning endgame after stout
defence) he turned down a draw and lost on time. A few days later Short
sacked his trainer, Czech-born US grandmaster Lubosh Kavalek, without
whom Short would never have got to play Kasparov in the first place.
After these two disastrous mistakes, Short was never in the match, which
was as one-sided as Merano 1981.

FIDE's reaction to the crisis was legalistic rather than sensible. Since the
World Chess Championship is a competition that pre-dates the
foundation of FIDE by four decades, a better effort should have been
made to heal the wounds in a way that would have commanded the
acceptance of the informed chess world. 

It is understandable FIDE chose not to recognise Kasparov as world
champion any more, but their best practical continuation would probably
to have been to continue with their next qualification cycle, with Karpov
seeded into the Candidates matches in place of Short. In two more years
this would produce a new challenger (possibly Karpov, possibly Anand)
and it would have been hard for Kasparov not to play a reunification
match against this person. This would have meant FIDE regarding the
world title as officially vacant for 2-3 years, possibly slightly illogical
but much preferable in the eyes of the chess world to what they actually
did.

FIDE decided they needed their own "world champion" but the ensuing
title match had no credibility. This is because it was played between two
men (Karpov and Timman) who had recently been defeated in matches
by Nigel Short! No wonder Campomanes could not get any serious
sponsorship or prize money for this match. I am surprised that Timman
played it. Nothing surprises me about Karpov. He is now down to 10th
in the FIDE rankings but still thinks he should be regarded as World
Champion.

As a result of beating Timman, Karpov was declared World Champion
by FIDE while the Intel-backed PCA recognised Kasparov. So we had
two World Champions in 1994. Both organisations proceeded to
organise elimination tournaments and a Candidates series to select their
next challengers. Some grandmasters even played in both series. So at
this stage both organisations followed the old model of qualifying
competitions first a tournament, then a series of matches (over about 8
games). Kamsky emerged from the FIDE series, while Anand got to
challenge Kasparov. 

The two "World Championship" matches of 1995 followed different
paths entirely, Karpov-Kamsky was played in Ilyumzhinov's remote
home town of Elista; Karpov took an early lead but Kamsky fought
creditably and there was some decent chess played. The PCA match in
New York got all the glitzy publicity but began slowly and ended in a
terrible anti-climax as Anand's match strategy was poor and his nerves
went at the crisis. 

The match began with several short draws and then Anand won game 9.
However, he lost the lead immediately because of bad openings
preparation and then he lost again in game 11 to go behind. He soon lost
two more games and then started offering short draws to end the match.
Short and Kamsky had both fought harder in a hopeless cause than
Anand, who was a terrible disappointment to his supporters; maybe he
will do better if he gets another chance this year or next. There was
almost no interesting chess played in this match at all, and since then
Kasparov has not moved a pawn in defence of his claims to be World
Champion. 

Last year he tried to set up a contest between Kramnik and Anand, the
two players with the best claim (on paper) to be his challenger but
Anand declined because of contractual obligations to FIDE. Shirov was
found to replace Anand and he defeated Kramnik by exposing the
favourite's limitations in both openings preparation and endgame
technique. However, his subsequent tournament results were
unimpressive and the sponsorship that appeared to be in place for a
Kasparov-Kramnik match evaporated when a one-sided Kasparov-Shirov
clash was in the offing. So this year Kasparov tried again to arrange a
match with the one player who would have some chance of being widely
regarded as his main rival for the top spot, namely Anand. Both
Kasparov and Anand chose to pass on Vegas to avoid being tied by any
FIDE contracts preventing them playing for other "championship" titles
(and to avoid being the victims of the casino effect) but even this new
match is in doubt. 

Maybe there will never again be a traditional world championship
match, and if not the game will be the poorer for it. Chess is, after all,
one of the greatest intellectual challenges devised by Man and its
supreme prize should be decided by who can out-think his opponent, not
by who can shift wood fastest and punch the clock quickest in a blitz
finish.

I cannot regard any event as a true chess world championship that (like
Las Vegas) involves rapid-play tie-break. The tradition of the world
championship has always been that the best player is decided by a
lengthy head-to-head contest under optimum conditions. The 40 moves
in 150 minutes time limit (with adjournments for very long games) gives
the players time to think and find the best moves they can at all stages
and (hopefully) give the world an exhibition of how chess at its very best
can be played. The duration of the match should be a minimum of 12
games to give the players a chance to test their opponents' opening
repertoires and to give time to recover from an early defeat.

The Las Vegas format is potentially attractive to spectators and sponsors
(though in fact FIDE seemed to find both in short supply) and it has one
major advantage. It is democratic, in that a much wider range of masters
and grandmasters get the opportunity to show what they can do on a big
stage with big prizes. It poses a welcome threat to the golden circle of
highly rated players to get invitations to all-play-all events and keep their
high ratings by averaging 50% in those events. It may in future lead to
those players who did surprisingly well at Vegas (e.g. Khalifman and
Nisipeanu) gaining invitations so they can show whether they really can
match the Kramniks, Kasparovs and Anands. That cannot be bad.

With every year that goes by, Kasparov's claims to be World Champion
becomes more tenuous. However, he has kept it alive with a string of
excellent tournament wins in 1999 while nobody else can match his
consistency.

When Petrosian was World Champion from 1963-69 he did not win one
tournament outright. There was talk that a "tournament world
championship" should be instituted but nobody questioned he was a
great player very strong in tactics (especially defensively) with
positional sense and endgame technique that had been able to surpass
Botvinnik. His problem was partly a lack of ambition once he became
champion, and partly that his style led to a lot of draws. He was a player
more suited to match-play than tournaments, especially ones which
(unlike today's high-category events) were not uniformly populated by
grandmasters of the highest calibre.

So Khalifman might be regarded as the "tournament world champion",
but not the true world champion. The list of world champions stemming
from Steinitz is a kind of apostolic succession, broken only by the death
of Alekhine before he could defend his title that was not his fault but
was due to World War Two. On this champions' roll of honour, where
only the names of eternal greats should be inscribed, I see no place (yet)
for Alexander Khalifman; to earn it, he must beat Kasparov (or a true
successor to Kasparov) in a traditional style match. Maybe he can do it.

Perhaps the best comparison of all is with professional cycling. Events
are ridden over all kinds of distances and different conditions. The
toughest event of all is the multi-stage Tour de France which last 3
weeks with flat stages suiting sprinters and high mountain finishes
suiting a different type of rider altogether. The winner gets to wear the
coveted yellow jersey on the podium in Paris.

However, professional cycling also has its "world champion" who is the
winner of a long road race on one single day. By that analogy, you can
regard Khalifman as world champion if you wish but I still think
Kasparov wears the yellow jersey of chess.