Karpov, Anatoly vs Kasparov, Garry, World Championship 32th-KK2

Game 12 of the 1985 Karpov-Kasparov rematch in Moscow was one of the slower draws of the match. The new format — “first to 12.5 of 24” — eliminated the marathon problem of the 1984 match. Both players knew the title would be decided by the end of the year.

The opening was a Caro-Kann Defense — Karpov’s signature Black weapon. Kasparov as White entered a solid middlegame in which Karpov’s technique was at its considerable best. The game was drawn in 41 moves after a sequence of minor-piece exchanges that clarified the position.

The match score after Game 12 was 6-6. Six draws, three Kasparov wins, three Karpov wins. The pattern of the match would continue similarly through Game 23, when Kasparov won the deciding game and became the youngest world chess champion in history at 22 years and 210 days.

The 1985 match has been called by some commentators the “best-played” world championship of the era. The standard of play was uniformly high; few clear blunders appeared; the games that were decisive turned on subtle positional or tactical points rather than on outright errors. Game 12 was characteristic of the match’s level: a difficult draw in which both players found the best moves in a position with limited winning chances.

The Caro-Kann Classical, especially after 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Bf5, was the most heavily studied line in elite chess of the period. The Kasparov–Karpov matches between 1984 and 1990 produced dozens of theoretical novelties in this opening alone, several of which have remained part of modern theory.