Where Karpov is King

[Richard James]

1977 BBC documentary on Karpov here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O50kD8x2_a0

A lot of familiar faces for you to spot.

[MJMcCready]

Yes I saw that, its very good indeed. Well produced and researched.

[Nick Ivell]

This brought back many memories.

Karpov did not have Fischer's combinational vision. What he did have was the most amazing positional sense, probably the greatest ever.

What Hartston could have said is that Karpov was better than him in every aspect of the game.

[MJMcCready]

This brought back many memories.

Karpov did not have Fischer's combinational vision. What he did have was the most amazing positional sense, probably the greatest ever.

What Hartston could have said is that Karpov was better than him in every aspect of the game.

I see you briefly appear in this doc. Hartston doesn't mention Fischer does he? Or draw comparisons between him and Karpov.

[Nick Ivell]

Just to clarify, I meant that Karpov was better than Hartston! Not very controversial.

[MJMcCready]

Ok

[Christopher Kreuzer]

I will watch the full 45 mins eventually, but was trying to jump around to identify the talking heads and gave up because I have to wait to skip adverts...

Can anyone list the familiar faces (most I will not have seen before)? The comments about chess being "unsolvable" have not aged well (though I suppose it depends how you define 'solved').

[Matt Mackenzie]

Well yes, its still some way from being *properly* solved isn't it. Which is absolutely fine.

[Colin Patterson]

Some names to put to faces. No doubt I've forgotten a few already, but here goes - Genna Sosonko, Tony Miles, Viktor Korchnoi, Max Euwe, Fridrik Olafsson, Vlastimil Hort, Svetozar Gligoric, Michael Stean, John Nunn, Vasily Smyslov, Nigel Short, Anatoly Karpov, Robert Huebner, Bill Hartston, Jan Timman, Miguel Quinteros, Eugenio Torre, Yuri Balashov ...

And if I remember correctly, Nunn, Mestel and Stean all made GM norms at the Lord John Cup (the second featured event). Makes me wonder if that has happened before or since? Three English GM norms in a single event? Hard to imagine.

[Colin Patterson]

I may have missed Bernard Cafferty? I think I saw him too.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Many thanks, Colin!

The Lord John Cup came up recently here in my somewhat scattergun attempt earlier this month to ferret out histories of some of the early ENG GM norms.

And that led to a reminder that Leonard Barden posted a fuller account of the Lord John Cup in a forum thread in August 2009.

Which has today reminded me of another thread (from September 2025) that starts off with Kenny Shovel and ends with some more details of his father Ralph Shovel.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Some thoughts of my own on the 1977 documentary (well, the first half as watched so far):

- Loved the commentary and thoughts of Max Euwe who I may have never heard speaking before. I noticed he said chess has expanded a lot but he then clarified that he was referring to the number of "top players" from about 5 in his time to about 25 now (i.e. 1970s). I wonder if it is possible to put names to those top players and judge whether we would agree with that assessment with the benefit of further hindsight?

- Also loved the segment by Jan Hein Donner. Who was the perfect person to pick to ponder whether chess is logical.

Two more names (I think there was a portrait of Lenin as well) that are amateur chess players, the documentary presenter Paul Jennings and the psychologist ("reader in psycholinguistics") Peter Wason (better known to chess players as the co-author with Bill Hartston of the 1983 work The Psychology of Chess).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Cathcart_Wason

The presenter Paul Jennings is an author not a TV personality (though I may be unaware of other TV programmes he may have presented) and is described by Wikipedia as an author and humourist, but was also a poet (the segment of him reading out a poem on chess by 18th-century philologist William Jones is delightful):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Jenn ... sh_author)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J ... ilologist)

There is a segment in the William Jones Wikipedia article on the poem:

In 1763, at the age of 17, Jones wrote the poem Caissa in English, based on a 658-line poem called "Scacchia, Ludus" published in 1527 by Marco Girolamo Vida, giving a mythical origin of chess that has become well known in the chess world.

[MJMcCready]

it's a very good documentary. I'm surprised it suddenly resurfaced after all these years.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Second half thoughts:

- Lovely segment from eminent literary critic, academic and philosopher George Steiner, filmed in either his Cambridge or Oxford rooms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Steiner

- Jennings gives a figure of 55,000 chess players in Britain and over 4 million in Russia (possibly he meant the Soviet Union) and then quotes from C. H. [O'D.] Alexander (I think it might even be possible to work out which book of Alexander's he is holding and reading from in a garden or cemetery somewhere).

- Also a piece from Russ Taylor of sponsor Cutty Sark who gives a figure of 3 million (presumably in the UK?) playing chess. Some room here for interpretation (see 55,000 figure above).

- Was there a brief glimpse of Bob Wade in the audience at 33.48 in the Lord John Cup segment?

- Does anyone know the player Karpov is facing at 43:40 with cameramen in attendance? Bespectacled and dark-haired in a suit.

- Final shoutout for the graphic designer mentioned in the credits, presumably for the art seen in the credits, a William Blaik:

https://www.ravensbourne.ac.uk/bbc-moti ... liam-blaik

Will add timestamp links later (can't do that on my phone).

The YouTube comments (65 so far) are mostly not worth reading but some insightful bits.

To pick up on MJM's point, it has resurfaced as an official release from the BBC Archives, so hopefully more like that to come. A YouTube channel worth subscribing to.

[John Saunders]

- Was there a brief glimpse of Bob Wade in the audience at 33.48 in the Lord John Cup segment?

Are you mixing up Bob Wade with Bernard Cafferty (full face at 33:28)? I don't think Bob Wade appeared anywhere though that might conceivably have been him walking right to left at the Lord John Cup at 33:14 to stand beside arbiter David Levy (in the light jacket). But maybe too well dressed for Bob! I did spot Dimitrije Bjelica somewhere in the film but can't remember where.

It was round 8 of the Lord John Cup, 13 September 1977. I remember attending round 9 so missed my chance for BBC documentary immortality!

One major figure who appeared but has yet to be mentioned here was Semyon Furman. He was an absolutely key figure in Karpov's success and you could argue that after Furman's death (in early 1978) the team behind Karpov was never quite as effective as when he had been supported by Furman in his earlier years as challenger and world champion. Had Furman lived longer I suspect Karpov would have overcome Kasparov, at least in their first match.