On May 1, 6:26 pm, Jürgen R. wrote:

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?

The position is lost for Black after 53. -- Nxa5 but is
drawn after 53. -- Nd4.


That is an ordinary mistake. What I was looking
for was an "obvious", game-throwing blunder in an
"easily drawn" position.

I erred in thinking it was a draw at the very finish;
White wins by force, and this explains GM
Polugaevsky's resignation.

Back to 53. ... Nd4+ though: I've seen far worse
oversights by grandmasters; one fairly recent
example was then-world champion Kramnik
overlooking a mate-in-one which many weak
players might well have seen. It is ludicrous to
assert intentions where such things exist, as in
fact they do. It is simply arrogance to maintain
that grandmasters are error-free chess machines.
In the real world (not Evans ratpacker La-la land),
everyone makes such mistakes-- even the world
champions.


-- help bot