Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Karpov’s Blunder

Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov is a Russian chess GM. He was the official world champion from 1975 to 1985 when he was defeated by Garry Kasparov.

His chess performance includes 160 first-place finishes. He had a peak ELO rating of 2780 and he stayed a total of 102 months at world number one.

Despite his amazing curriculum, Karpov also made mistakes.

In 1993 he blundered a piece on move 12 against the American GM Larry Christiansen.

Here is the game:

It is unbelievable that a GM like Karpov could make such mistake and lose a game in only 12 moves!!

Why Karpov was unable to foresee that two of his pieces would be simultaneously under attack?

Perhaps he didn’t expect White’s queen would move back again to d1.

I wouldn’t say that tiredness is the reason for that blunder because it was a game in round 2.

Perhaps Karpov was playing on autopilot. It is well known that in a Queen’s Indian Defense all is about positional ideas and few tactics.

In any case, an embarrassing blunder.

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