The longest game

Book in English

In The Longest Game, Jan Timman returns to the matches between Kasparov and Karpov. Document all the twists of this fascinating saga, including behind the scenes impressions, and with a fresh new vision of the games.

On September 10, 1984, Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov appeared on the stage of the Hall of Columns in Moscow for the first game for the World Chess Championship. The clash between the reigning champion and his young and brazen challenger was highly anticipated, but no one could have foreseen what would happen.

In the next six years they would play five games for the title at the top and create one of the fiercest rivalries in sports history. The games lasted a total of 14 months, and the "two K" played 5540 plays in 144 games. The first game became front-page news around the world when, after five months, FIDE president Florencio Campomanes intervened to stop the match, citing the exhaustion of both participants.

A new match was organized and, after learning valuable lessons, Garry Kasparov became the youngest chess world champion in history. His victory was not only hailed as a triumph of imaginative chess attack, but also as a political victory. The representative of the "perestroika" had beaten the old champion, a symbol of Soviet stagnation.

Kasparov defended his title in three more matches, all of them full of drama. Karpov remained a formidable opponent and the overall score was just 7371 in favor of Kasparov. In The Longest Game, Jan Timman returns to the matches of Kasparov-Karpov. It tells the many twists and turns of this fascinating saga, including its impressions behind the scenes, and check out the games.