Anatoly Karpov’s lecture at Helsinki Chess Arena on Fri 23.8.2019 was a huge success! The place has never had that many spectators, there wasn’t enough chairs regardless we borrowed as many as we could from the neigbouring Bridge Arena. The audience was thrilled! 

Anatoly was relaxad, in good humor, telling stories and jokes. He showed three important games from his career, having an assistant to make the moves on the show-board:  

Karpov – Kamsky, Alekhine memorial 1992. It was a heavily contested Grünfeld with unusual piece placement and masterly conducted attack in the end. 

Karpov – Spassky, 9th game from the World Championship Candidates Semi-Final held in Leningrad in 1974. It was a Sicialian Scheveningen with subtle positional points before the concluding attack. 

Karpov – Kortshnoi, 2nd game from Candidates Final match, Moscow 1974. Karpov was very successful as White against Sicilian Dragon, here 21.Rd5! showing the depth of the attack, braking Black’s defence. 

Anatoly answered more than 20 questions from the audience, telling stories and analysing the question deeply and answering legthly. We enjoyed and were hungry for more. In the audience there were also FIDE General Director GM Emil Sutovsky, Iceland’s federation president Gunnar Björnsson and Håkan Jalling from the Swedish federation. Primus motor Panu Laine had the priviledge to move the pieces at the show-board accoring to Karpov’s instructions. A great evening! 

Videos at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLI9EOsEtn-Ph1Ey1RXsz3vOGZ5JVI2zj8 presentations starting on the 1st video at 15:01.