The blunder of Seville

Good news at the end of the year. Someone posted images on Youtube of the dramatic eleventh match game Karpov-Kasparov, Seville 1987! Kasparov’s faces after Karpov’s blunder 35.Rc6?? have become legendary but were not, as far as I know, available on internet before.

What I had forgotten (it was, after all, 19 years ago) is that Kasparov reacts quite coolly at first, and only starts making faces after he has made his move.

Seville 1987 was my first World Championship match als a chess lover. Thanks to the images of this game and the exciting boy’s novel Child of Change, Kasparov’s autobiography that was considered by everyone (including, curiously, Donner and Krabbé) to be the book of a lunatic, I became a fan of the thirteenth world champion.

And it’s true, seeing these old images does brings back some of those boyish feelings of excitement…