Carlsen-Karjakin 2016, Karpov-Kasparov 1985: a comparison

Last week’s column mentioned that this year’s World Championship 12th game of classical chess between Magnus Carlsen and Sergey Karjakin under standard time controls did not compare favourably to the 1985 World Championship 24th and final game of the Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov match.

The column has received some requests for the two games to be published side by side so chess enthusiasts can make an assessment of them.

The importance of these games cannot be denied, and they are somewhat similar. In the 1985 match, if Karpov had drawn,