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World Championship 31th-KK1 · Moscow · 05 October 1984

Karpov, Anatoly vs Kasparov, Garry, World Championship 31th-KK1

Karpov, Anatoly 1–0 Kasparov, Garry
Karpov, Anatoly vs Kasparov, Garry
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World Championship 31th-KK1, 05 October 1984

Game 9 of the 1984 Moscow World Championship match between Karpov and Kasparov was the game that took Karpov to a 4-0 lead. The match, played under “first to six wins” rules with no draw limit, was already extraordinary: at game 9, Karpov was already three-quarters of the way to retaining the title.

The opening was a Queen’s Gambit Declined — Karpov’s preferred positional system. Kasparov, the 21-year-old challenger, had not yet found a black weapon that consistently held against Karpov’s technique. The game continued through 45 moves of slow positional pressure, with Karpov accumulating the small structural advantages his style produced. By move 35 the endgame was lost; Kasparov resigned on move 45.

The 4-0 deficit looked terminal. Most chess observers — including many in Kasparov’s camp — assumed the match would end within another month. Then something extraordinary happened. Kasparov drew the next 17 games. Then the next 14. The match’s geographic moved through several Moscow venues; FIDE began to discuss formats; the players’ condition deteriorated through five months of play.

Eventually Karpov won Game 27 to make the score 5-0. Kasparov won Game 32 to make it 5-1 — his first win of the match. He won Game 47 to make it 5-2, then Game 48 to make it 5-3. After 48 games and five months, FIDE president Florencio Campomanes terminated the match without a result, citing the players’ health.

Game 9 — the third Karpov win in his early-match dominance — was the high-water mark of the older champion’s title defense. From that point onward, despite his 5-0 lead by Game 27, Karpov never again managed to put the match away. The Karpov-Kasparov rivalry that followed across four more world-championship matches and fifteen years began with this game.