Karpov | Korchnoi by James Troxel

This project analyzes two remarkably different chess matches played between Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi. The first is game two from the 1974 Candidates Final in Moscow, which has come to be regarded as a modern classic in tactics, strategy, and chess brilliance. The second is the entire, bizarre 1978 World Chess Championship in the Philippines, which quickly earned notoriety as an example of the type of superstition, paranoia, and scandal commonly observed in chess lore throughout the game’s rich history. Analyzing chess as a game of fast pattern recognition processes, and slow search processes allows us to see how two fine specimens of Kasparov's "Drosophila of reasoning" became so consumed with fear and loathing in the Philippines, while having delivered a master class only four years prior. This critique is then extended to our own "disinformation age." The roles of pattern recognition and time pressure are examined across these very different scenarios with supporting documentation from other historical accounts and written works on chess theory, statistics, and cognitive psychology. The visualizations that accompany the game analysis are designed to help readers see chess in the same way that a grandmaster does, and in so doing, help them to identify similarities between a grandmaster’s state of mind and their own.

While reading this bizarre story in today’s exhausting, 24-hour, 280-character media landscape, it is worth asking: Are we under the same kind of pressure as a chess genius? Is this reasonable? What ways do chess prodigies respond to this pressure and what are the possible outcomes?