Anatoly Karpov vs Garry Kasparov, World Championship 31th-KK1, R33

Game 33 of the 1984 Moscow World Championship match was played in the fifth month of the marathon. The score was 5-1 in Karpov’s favour; the match had been going on since September 10. Kasparov, after his Game 32 win — his first of the match — was beginning his comeback.

The opening was a Queen’s Gambit Declined again, the structural battleground of the match. By Round 33 the players had played each other’s preferred lines many times, and the theoretical novelties had been exchanged. This game was a quiet draw that maintained both players’ positions on the scoreboard but added another half-point to each side’s column of unbeaten games.

The Kasparov comeback would continue. He won Game 47 to make it 5-2, then Game 48 to make it 5-3. After 48 games and five months of play, FIDE president Florencio Campomanes terminated the match on health grounds. The decision was controversial then and remains so today; Kasparov’s perspective is that he was approaching a position from which he might have won the match, and the termination saved Karpov’s title.

The 1984 match changed how World Championships were organised. The “first to six wins” format was abolished. The 1985 rematch and all subsequent matches used a fixed 24-game format with the title decided by score. Game 33 — one of the dozens of late-match draws — is a small but significant part of that historical inflection.

Game record

This game between Karpov, Anatoly and Kasparov, Garry was played at the World Championship 31th-KK1 in Moscow in 1984. Played in round 33. At the time of the game, the players were rated 2705 (White) and 2715 (Black). The game lasted 20 moves, ending with a drawn outcome. It is part of the late-Soviet and Cold-War chess era.

Opening context

The opening sequence runs 1. Nf3 d5 2. d4 Nf6 3. c4 e6 4. Nc3 c6, after which the players entered the middlegame proper.