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Korch was within one game in a long match of winning the world championship two different times in his forties. The champ was a young twentysomething Karpov. T
by WildUtah 10y ago
Korch was within one game in a long match of winning the world championship two different times in his forties. The champ was a young twentysomething Karpov.
Then he went on to be the best fiftysomething chess player ever to play the game in his fifties. And the best sixtysomething in his sixties. And the best seventy-something in his seventies.
He had a stroke right around age eighty but managed to slip in at least one win against American grandmaster and world championship candidate Fabiano Caruana in 2011 after he turned eighty, so he was the best ever of that decade as well.
Chess players usually peak a bit before thirty. Korchnoi defected after forty. As a dissident under the Soviet system, Korchnoi didn't have the chance to prove himself in international competition in his twenties or thirties, but he may have been the best in the world for a long time before Karpov or Fischer reached the championship.
- rozim 10y agoIt would be interesting to see a comparison of Korchnoi vs Samuel Reshevsky as Reshevsky was quite strong as senior GM: "... He won his last American championship in 1971 at the age of 59. In 1981, at 69, he was a finalist among Americans seeking to qualify for the world championship matches. And in 1984, at 72, he tied for first place in the Reykjavik International Tournament, his last world-class showing..." http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/07/nyregion/samuel-reshevsky-is-dead-chess-grandmaster-was-80.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/07/nyregion/samuel-reshevsky-... There's a story of how how when Reshevsky was quite old he went to watch a strong tournament in Europe and someone dropped out, and they asked him to be a last minute substitute ("house player"?) and didn't he surprise everyone by winning it? But Korchnoi RIP, such great fighting spirit and interesting games.
- TwoBit 10y agoHas any other 80 year old, or 70 year old, legitimately beaten a grandmaster?
- rozim 10y agoReshevsky, many times over. "In 1981, at the age of 70, he tied for 3rd place in the U.S. Championship. In 1984, at the age of 72, he took first place in the powerful Reykjavik Open, which featured many grandmasters" http://www.chessgames.com/player/samuel_reshevsky.html http://www.chessgames.com/player/samuel_reshevsky.html
- ubernostrum 10y agoCapablanca likely could have if he hadn't died relatively young (age 53). He had been staging a serious middle-age return to high-level play at the time and was an extraordinarily gifted player: when Arpad Elo developed the rating system, he compiled ratings for past players and ended up assigning Capablanca what was at the time the highest rating of any player in history. Meanwhile Garry Kasparov is now the same age Capablanca was at his death, and continues to play at a very high level; he still holds a FIDE rating of 2812, down from his peak of 2851 and historically second only to Magnus Carlsen's peak of 2882, and in April finished third in a blitz tournament where he put up a 2-1-3 record against eventual champion and GM Hikaru Nakamura.
- dfan 10y agoSure. Keep in mind that the top GMs have ratings of 2700 and above, while some GMs have ratings as low as the 2400s. So a top-level GM still has a large amount of age-related distance to fall before he won't be a match for a "low-level GM".
- parsnips 10y agoVasily Smyslov was a world championship candidate at age 62, and lost to Kasparov in a match.
- _yosefk 10y agoAs a dissident under the Soviet system, Korchnoi didn't have the chance to prove himself in international competition in his twenties or thirties I don't think he was a dissident in his twenties or thirties, and he did play in international tournaments.