Jim West On Chess: Kasparov on "After Words"

Monday, November 19, 2007

Kasparov on "After Words"

An October 16th interview of Garry Kasparov aired this weekend on After Words, a program on C-Span 2 that features authors of recent books. I watched the 6 o'clock broadcast last night.

Of all the anecdotes told by Kasparov, my favorite one pertains to game 24 of the match in Seville between the two K's. Karpov needed only a draw to regain the title. Kasparov obtained a winning position but blundered it away after the referee startled him by tapping his shoulder, reminding him to write down the moves on his scoresheet. Karpov should now have drawn the game and won the match, but he blundered in return!

If you missed the interview, you can catch it here.

"My study of chess was accompanied by a strong attraction to music, and it was probably thanks to this that from childhood I became accustomed to thinking of chess as an art, and have never regarded it as anything else, for all the science and sport involved in it. And, moreover, an art which in some ways is closer to music than it is customary to think. Perhaps chess and music are drawn together by laws of harmony and beauty which are difficult to formulate and difficult to grasp, or perhaps by something else." - Vasily Smyslov