“Lost masses of amateurs”: Anatoly Karpov on his interest in chess and the education of athletes

Anatoly Karpov was born on May 23, 1951 in the city of Zlatoust, Chelyabinsk Region. He became interested in chess in childhood: he began by visiting a section at a metallurgical plant, thanks to the system of selection and promotion of young athletes operating in the USSR, he passed all stages of the competition, and as a result became the twelfth world chess champion since the beginning of the world championships. RT spoke with the grandmaster about former and current champions, the prospects for sports in Russia, and life outside the chessboard.

"A problem for my father"

- You have gone from a section at a factory to the highest chess title. What moments do you consider to be momentous for your career?

- When I was growing up, there was an increased interest in chess. There was a hunger for chess literature in the USSR. I remember how incredibly happy I was when I was able to buy my first book about the '59 Candidates Tournament in Chelyabinsk.

The entire Soviet Union was embraced by chess teachers. We had specialists in almost every region who watched competitions, championships in large cities and tried to find talented children. There was a deeply layered talent identification system.

When I first left my city for the regional championship, I was eight years old. At nine, I already left for the Russian Youth Championship. Then the metallurgical plant took care of me. And in less than ten years I became the champion of the city among men, and already played in the team of the metallurgical plant on the first board. I became a candidate master in chess at the age of 11.

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An important metallurgical plant in the Soviet Union sent me a leading metallurgical engineer who accompanied me on a business trip for two weeks. Now it is difficult to imagine that any production would send one of the leading engineers of its plant or company to accompany a young athlete.

- Did your parents work at this plant? 

- It was just a problem for my father, because he was the chief engineer of another plant. And the chess players of his enterprise came to him with resentment that his son was against them.

- Why did you choose a section at this particular plant? 

- At that time we had sections and teams at every large enterprise, but the metallurgical plant was clearly superior to all others. We arranged matches with Magnitka, where up to 100 thousand people worked at the best of times. And at our factory, in my opinion, eight thousand.

We lost to them, but fought, played matches on 50 boards. They came to them on Saturday-Sunday, and the next year they came to us. Putting such a team up is not an easy task, especially with a trip to another region.

With the team of the metallurgical plant, I drove through almost all the metallurgical enterprises of the Southern Urals, I was in Chebarkul, in Chelyabinsk, in Magnitogorsk.

"A series of grandiose mistakes"

- Why do you think the interest in playing chess has faded in Russia? And how would you describe the current state of this sport in our country?

- Of course, we lost the masses of amateurs that we had, although gradually teaching chess in special and even general education schools is reviving, and somewhere even as a mandatory discipline. But professional chess has lost a lot of positions in our country.

There are several reasons for this. On the one hand, people have more opportunities to express themselves in different directions, not only in chess. On the other hand, the leadership of the International Chess Federation made a number of grandiose mistakes. For example, due to the reform of the World Cup, chaos reigned in sports, random results appeared, random champions. All this, unfortunately, lowered professional chess a few positions lower than it was in the 70s and 80s.

- What kind of reform was it? 

- The World Chess Championships were held when no one had thought about the global scale of sports. The first took place 10 years before the modern Olympic Games, in 1886. There have been 12 world champions in chess for 100 years. 

And then, after Kasparov and I stopped fighting for the title of world champion, Ilyumzhinov (President of the International Chess Federation (FIDE) from 1995 to 2018 - RT) produced, in my opinion, nine world champions in 15 years. Over 100 years - 12, over 15 years - nine. 

I was, with a short break, world champion from 75th to 99th year. To become one, I had to play a total of 100 games with the best chess players in the world. Ilyumzhinov came up with an absurd, in my opinion, knockout system, according to which one could become the world champion in 18 games if he won immediately.  

- How do you assess modern chess?

- We have seriously lost our position. In general, competitions in the world are held at the highest level, although from a financial point of view, chess has sagged very much in relation to the time of my championship. In absolute terms, the world championship match against Kasparov was more than three times higher in prize money than it is now. And in terms of the purchasing power of the dollar, I think that it is ten higher, if not 15.

- The prize fund is one million dollars. You received this amount even during the Soviet era. Was it taxed? How was the issue with the currency account resolved?

- Differently. In the USSR, for a long time, prizes at international competitions for musicians, theatrical figures, athletes and others were not taxed to give an opportunity to develop culture and sports. There was a special government decision about this. And yes, for such cases, a foreign currency account was opened. 

- What do you think  of the most titled grandmaster to date, the reigning world champion since 2013, Norwegian Magnus Carlsen?

- We know him. Magnus Karlsson is a well-deserved champion and he defends his title quite confidently. He is well versed in chess, has extensive knowledge, and despite his age, he already has a lot of experience. But he lacks the breadth of education.

If earlier, when I became a grandmaster, in the strongest grandmaster "50" of the world on the fingers of one hand it was possible to count those who did not have a higher education, now, unfortunately, the opposite is true - on the fingers of one hand you can count the grandmasters who have.

- It always seemed to me that chess is a highly intellectual game.

- And so it was. Botvinnik believed that without the breadth of education a chess player cannot achieve success, let alone a champion title. All the champions were well educated. We know little about the first, about Steinitz, -this is the end of the 19th century. But now the second champion, Lasker, was a professor of philosophy and mathematics. The third champion, Capablanca, was the largest diplomat. Alekhin was a lawyer, knew many languages. Euwe is a professor of mathematics, Botvinnik is a professor of technical sciences. That is, the world champions had a very broad and deep education.

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Higher education ended, probably, on me. Kasparov, in my opinion, graduated from the Pedagogical Institute in Baku. But, it is true, when he began to reach the chess top, he was engaged in self-education. And then ... Kramnik has a formal higher education, but it is sports. By that time, it could be obtained without particularly bothering oneself, in the presence of high sports success.

- Your title sounds like "World Chess Champion among men." In modern reality, this sounds sexist, because chess is an intellectual game. Do you think this division is justified? 

- This is a tribute to tradition. Restrictions work only in one direction - women have the right to play with men. There are women's tournaments, but no one limits their ability to participate in men's. For example, the first world-famous chess player Vera Menchik, she was the best in pre-war times, in the 30s, and quite successfully participated in men's international tournaments.

No one has ever restricted women. But men cannot play in women's competitions. So there are just more opportunities for women.

- In connection with the performances in the United States, there was talk that chess is a racist game, because white people always go first. How do you feel about such statements?

- Of course, there is a problem in America, and it is quite serious. But the fact that these problems are trying to pull up everything that is possible and that is not ... I say that now the time of fools has come.

White and black were in chess long before the colonization of Africa began and modern slavery arose. To attract black and white in chess to the problems of racism in America is simply not knowing the history of chess.

From chess to brands

- You founded a company that produces chess. Are they made here in Russia?

- Yes, our headquarters is in Moscow. We have no factory. We are talking about chess made of mammoth ivory, this is all individual production. The best carvers are recruited throughout the country. There are both in Kiev and Kharkov. At first we used the services of Chinese carvers, but we realized that ours are more inventive and better when they master new topics in chess design. And the Chinese are good at repeating. 

- What is the most memorable performance theme that your company has done? 

- Chess by Rodin. There is chess, we call it "in the style of Gaudi", an unusual shape.

• The Rodin Passion chess set. Photo from the site of the company Anatoly Karpov.

Or, for example, one customer somehow chose the theme of the confrontation between Russians and Tatars on Kalka. These are all one-off production, very expensive, but they are unique, and therefore attractive. You can play with them, but difficult. However, we also make classical chess of the Staunton form, which can be used to play matches for the world championship.

- Is it a profitable business or is it more of a hobby?

- We are glad. The company's capitalization is growing, now it is about a million dollars, because we have more and more chess models. Each new option requires investments of $ 15-20 thousand for the development, and we have a total of 80-90 of them. There is no profit, but it's good that everything pays off. 

- What activity takes the most of your time now?

- Deputy, first of all. And second, I am developing the system of my chess schools in Russia and around the world. 

In Tyumen, chess is now taught in 350 schools and 80 kindergartens. Moreover, since September last year, we began to attract boys and girls to chess from the age of four. Before that, the minimum age was five.

I want to say that teaching children the rules even at this age is not a big problem, and the guys are happy to study.

We also revived the school tournament "White Ladya", recently crossed the line of 100 thousand participants. Although, of course, the scale is not the same: in 1986 in the USSR, 460 thousand boys and girls took part in the tournament, in terms of Russia, it was about 300 thousand. 

- You are one of the most avid philatelists in Russia. Is this also a hobby from those Soviet times, when chess was popular? How much is your collection worth?

- Yes, I have been fond of this for a long time. He started with stamps of the Soviet Union and chess. Then I began to study the Olympic Games, then there was the fauna, such a childish hobby, after that I seriously collected Belgium and the Belgian Congo. 

- Why Belgium?

- I wanted to collect something from the classics. And I realized that I could not beat the French classics, they are insanely expensive, English, German - too. And the Belgian - like nothing. But when I got in, I realized that the Belgian, if deeply collected, also requires a lot of money. And in general, I have succeeded in this - I have collected the best collection in history: the Belgian and Belgian Congo.

Besides, I have a good collection of big Russia. These are the Russian Empire, Russian Post outside the country, Finland, Levant, China. Well, and, of course, the Soviet Union.

- Do you have a catalog of your collection?

- Now it is quite fashionable: the largest philatelic houses release unique editions of the best collections in the USA, France, Switzerland. My collection was the best in Belgium. I participated in world exhibitions, and when they saw the level of the collection in one of the large auction houses, they asked to publish a book on it. In my opinion, there were three volumes.

"Our family's record"

- Your mother turned 100 this January. What is the secret of her longevity?

- Iron will, resilience and a large supply of vitality. For example, in 1977, she suffered from Botkin's disease (hepatitis A) and was in a very serious condition. I ended up in a department where there were 15 patients, and only two of them survived - she and a young girl.

At 90, she broke her hip. Many old people fail to survive this. I immediately brought my mother to the traumatology department of Pervaya Gradskaya. They said: "The operation for the state of the heart cannot be done, but leave it, we will take care." I say: “If the operation cannot be done, then we can take care of it at home. Why should we burden the hospital? "

We did not give up, hired a nurse, my sister and daughter studied all the literature on the topic. It turned out that traditional medicine advises to eat more onions and garlic. Mom does not eat raw onions, she cannot stand garlic in any form, but she ate stewed onions 100 grams every day, at the rate of two grams per kilogram of weight. She weighed about 50 kg. And at 91, her femoral neck grew together. The head of the department, when we took an X-ray, said that for the first time he saw that at this age the bone healed naturally.

• Anatoly Karpov with his mother Nina Grigorievna. Photo from personal archive. 2009 year

In general, in our family, both in the male and female lines, as far as we can reach, her mother, my grandmother, lived the longest. 91 years old, it was a record for our family. 

- The champion's mom broke all records. What do your wife, children, grandchildren do, do they play chess?

- My wife is a historian-archivist. She became an expert in painting. The daughter graduates from MGIMO, faculty of international journalism. She was born in 99th year. I tell her that she is both a happy and unhappy person, because she was born at the transition from millennium to millennium. And someone, ironically, can say: "She is from the past millennium." My daughter is a writing man, she has a good pen. Now she is gaining knowledge, knows literature well. So I think that she chose the profession correctly, by herself.

- How did you survive the pandemic? It was the perfect time for chess lovers, wasn't it?

- Chess is one of those activities that the online format is suitable for. During the period of self-isolation and closure of countries, I supported the initiative of the French Chess Federation, we held a world tournament on the Internet. There were many participants, it was possible to collect 6.5 million euros, which were sent to EU hospitals to cure those infected with the coronavirus. 

I also held a children's tournament for Muscovites and residents of the Moscow region. Children from other regions of Russia also took part in it. In mid-April, when everyone was already yearning for a real occupation, 1666 boys and girls under the age of 14 took part in the competition.

- Have you thought about creating a serious internet platform for chess lovers?

- It already exists, and for a long time. I didn't follow the latest statistics, but even when I ran for President of the International Chess Federation in 2010, more than 400 million games were played in the online system a year.

There are clubs, there are programs that we use. There is no distance problem on the internet. You log into the system, click on a button, choose blitz, rapid chess, five-minute, three-minute and wait for a partner at the other end of the world, he can enter even under a pseudonym. If you have half an hour free, then you played six games of five-minute chess, enjoyed yourself, and did other things.