This story is from November 19, 2014

GAME 7: Was it Korchnoi vs Karpov? Not quite

Was it a poetic justice that Game 7 fell short of longest game ever in World chess championship history?
GAME 7: Was it Korchnoi vs Karpov? Not quite
PUNE: Was it a poetic justice that Game 7 fell short of longest game ever in World chess championship history?
Magnus Carlsen stretched Anand till 122 moves on Monday . But it was still two short of a fascinating yet acrimonious fifth game of the title match between Viktor Korchnoi and Anatoly Karpov in 1978. Korchnoi had missed a mating sequence on move 55 then. And he decided to annoy the world champion by playing on.
The players were not on speaking terms with each other. Hence the draw offer from either side was a remote possibility.
Challenger Korchnoi's material advantage was not sufficient to win. But even after 107 moves (when Korchnoi had a bishop, a-file pawn and king; and Karpov had a-file pawn and king), the former decided to play on. Karpov had to con struct a stalemate for himself.A point was split only after the champion had no move left to play with his king not under check. Korchnoi said it gave him a great pleasure to 'stalemate' Karpov.
Though Carlsen's position was far better than Korchnoi's on Monday , the Norwegian appeared to take some pleasure in keeping Anand on the board for six and a half hours. "Basically, when he went for his ending he already signed up for suffering so it didn't make that much difference," said Carlsen.
The 23-year-old could have scored a point by stretching the veteran thus far in what looked like a draw. But at the same time, Anand too earned the confidence of defending well in this type of position. If the game had lasted three more moves, Anand would have held a unique record: of being involved in the longest and shortest games in World championship. He had defeated Boris Gelfand in the eighth game of 2012 match in 17 moves.
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