Anatoly Karpov

Anatoli Yevgenyevich Karpov (????????? ??????????? ???????) (born May 23, 1951) is a Russian chess grandmaster and former World Champion. He is the most successful tournament player of all time, and as of July 2005 he has 161 first-place finishes to his credit. From 1978 to 1998 he played in every FIDE World Championship match. His overall professional record is 1,118 wins, 287 losses, and 1,480 draws in 3,163 games. His peak ELO rating is 2780.

Grandmaster

Karpov was born on May 23, 1951 in Zlatoust in the former Soviet Union and learned to play chess at the age of 4. At age 12 he was accepted into Mikhail Botvinnik's prestigious chess school. Ironically, Botvinnik had this to say about a young Karpov: "The boy doesn't have a clue about chess, and there's no future at all for him in this profession." Karpov proved him wrong by becoming the youngest Soviet National Master in history at 15, and won in his first international chess tournament several months later. In 1967 he took 5th in the Soviet Junior Chess Championship and won the European Junior Chess Championship later that same year. In 1969 he became the first Soviet player since Boris Spassky (1955) to win the World Junior Chess Championship with a score of 10 out of 11. Soon afterwards he tied for 4th place at an international tournament in Caracas, Venezuela and became the world's youngest Grandmaster.

Related Topics:
Zlatoust - Soviet Union - Mikhail Botvinnik - 1967 - Soviet Junior Chess Championship - European Junior Chess Championship - 1969 - Boris Spassky - World Junior Chess Championship - Caracas, Venezuela - Grandmaster

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