Certainly one of the greatest rivalries in chess history began in Moscow on Sept. 10, 1984, when champion Anatoly Karpov, 33, faced challenger Gary Kasparov, 22.
Alas, FIDE president Florencio Campomanes bent the rules to cancel the match, a misdeed that ultimately cost the world chess body control over the world title, its principle source of revenue.The first to win six games, draws not counting, would be crowned.
FIDE rules gave Karpov the right to a rematch if he lost, but this seemed unlikely when he bolted from his corner with four wins in the first nine games.
After a record string of 17 draws, he won Game 27 to lead 5-0.
Now he needed just one more win to hold the title he seized by default from Bobby Fischer in 1975.
This is the one that got away. Kasparov's amazing comeback changed the course of chess and led to the Professional Chess Association taking charge of the title in 1993.
With Kasparov's back to the wall, he beat his nemesis for the first time ever in Game 32.
They drew 14 more games until he won 47 and 48.
Years later in 1988, Larry Evans, the former U.S. champion, noted that Karpov's manager Victor Baturinsky, once a member of Stalin's secret police, disclosed that his man was on the verge of a breakdown.
He said he pleaded with Karpov over and over to play Game 49 - but in vain.
Instead, like a woozy boxer ahead on points, Karpov tried to stop the fight and postpone the last round.
This ploy marred his reputation, already shaky after he won two title bouts from Victor Korchnoi, a Soviet defector whose family was held hostage in the USSR.
Karpov led 5-3, but that sixth win eluded him. He was exhausted by the five-month ordeal and had shed 22 pounds.
At a press conference in Moscow on Feb. 15, 1985, Campomanes told the world, "At this very moment, I don't know what I intend to do."
Chess Life branded this "A gigantic whopper."
The Soviet News Agency Tass announced minutes earlier precisely what he intended to do. He later was picked up on his telling Karpov, "I told them exactly what you told me to tell them."
But Karpov was furious at the decision to start from scratch later in the year. He felt betrayed by the denial of a rest and the consequent loss of this two-point lead.
He now demanded that play resume - which his opponent had wanted all along - but this plea fell on deaf ears.
After Campo canceled the match for medical reasons, the press dubbed him "Karpovmanes." When asked whether he consulted any doctors, he shrugged that it wasn't necessary because he came from a medical family.
Kasparov won the next bout. As a token of good faith he gave up the rematch clause, a big edge, and then infuriated the Kremlin by offering a title shot to Fischer, who spurned the challenge.
The aborted K-K match still haunts FIDE to this day.
"It was an action condemned profoundly unethical not only by the fraternity of chess players but also by the world at large," stated the first PCA press release.
Campomanes keeps his position as president of FIDE, it is generally agreed, by providing the funds for Third World chess countries to send their voting delegates to the worldwide conventions who, naturally, keep voting for the man who supplies them their convention trips and expenses.
- POOR JAN - Poor Jan Timman. Here he is scheduled to start his International Chess Federation (FIDE) world title match with Anatoly Karpov on Sept. 7 and he loses his training match to a grandmaster from Greece, Spyridon Skembris.
The series of four games, contested on the island of Corfu, saw the Dutch grandmaster go down in a 1-3 thrashing.
Anyone who achieves the status of challenger for the world title is supposed to dispatch such opponents handily.