On May 1, 8:52 am, " wrote:

As far as I can tell, Karpov is the only World Champion in the FIDE
era to play a title defense with *no* advantage (twice with Korchnoi,
once vs. Kasparov) -- David Kane

Fischer once accused Soviets of throwing key games to each other in
international tourneys.


One of these "Soviets" was named Victor Kortchnoi.
GM Kortchnoi later debunked some accusations, and
others debunked the asinine theory that it was a vast
conspiracy to "stop BF" from winning.

However, there was collusion between three of the
/top contenders/; they did not "throw" their games,
but agreed to uncontested draws.


GM Yasser Seirawan, when asked if he ever saw any evidence of this in
his own experience, said: "His charge is absolutely true! I've seen it
happen. Soviet stars were expected to finish behind Karpov and I saw
Polugaevsky throw away an easy draw against him in this simple
endgame.


I went to chessgames.com and replayed this game.

It seemed to me that GM Polugaevsky gave GM
Karpov a very difficult time-- forcing him onto defense
for much of the game. However, at the very, very
finish, it is not clear how or why the "1-0" score was
achieved, since the position is drawn. Was there a
flag fall? Did some idiot *resign*, where even the
GetClub program might have held the draw?


When Spassky committed the crime of finishing first ahead of
Karpov in Spain, they cut off his interzonal funding -- which is
why Spassky left Russia and went to play for France in the
Olympiads."


Mr. Spassky was a real annoyance. I recall that
at one time he, and he alone, had a nice plus
score against fave Bobby Fischer-- even with the
King's Gambit! In retaliation, BF wrote an article
"refuting" the whole shebang.


-- help bot