Viktor Korchnoi Games: Study Korchnoi Games Move by Move

Viktor Korchnoi (1931–2016) was a Soviet-born, later Swiss grandmaster and one of the strongest players never to become world champion. He won the USSR Championship four times and qualified for the Candidates—the competition that selected the world-title challenger—on ten occasions. After losing the 1974 Candidates final to Anatoly Karpov, Korchnoi left the Soviet Union in 1976 and rebuilt his career in the West. He then won consecutive Candidates cycles and challenged Karpov for the World Championship in Baguio in 1978 and Merano in 1981. His elite career lasted for decades; even in his seventies he remained a dangerous tournament opponent, and in 2006 he won the World Senior Championship at age 75.

Korchnoi's competitive style was built on resistance. He was willing to defend difficult positions for hours, but his defence was rarely passive: he searched constantly for active counterplay, tactical resources, and changes in the pawn structure that would force an opponent to solve fresh problems. He could calculate sharply in chaotic middlegames, defend inferior endgames with great accuracy, and then reverse the direction of a game when the opponent relaxed. That combination of stubbornness and activity made him especially dangerous in long matches, where psychological endurance and the ability to recover after setbacks mattered almost as much as opening preparation.

The games on this page show those qualities against several generations of elite opponents. The early Spassky game reveals Korchnoi's tactical confidence, while his wins against Fischer and Tal demonstrate how quickly he could seize the initiative against celebrated attackers. The Candidates and World Championship games with Karpov show a more mature fighter creating chances against one of chess history's greatest positional players. When using Guess the Move, do not look only for a defensive move. First identify the opponent's threat, then ask whether Korchnoi could answer it with a forcing move, an active piece improvement, or a pawn break that changes the character of the position.