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Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov are unquestionably the protagonists who featured in the greatest ever chess rivalry. Between 1984 and 1990 they contested five long matches for the World Championship. This 3rd volume of the,'Garry Kasparov on Modern Chess' series concentrates on the third and fourth matches in this sequence: London/Leningrad 1986 and Seville 1987. Both matches were tremendously exciting and hard fought and both produced chess of an extremely high level. The 1986 clash was groundbreaking in that it was the first World Championship match between two Soviets to take place outside Moscow. It was split between London and Leningrad with twelve games being played at both venues. The defending champion was now Kasparov (having won the 1985 match) and he leapt into an apparently decisive three point lead. However, this sensationally dissolved when a crisis broke out in the Kasparov camp. Karpov exploited this and pulled off the remarkable feat of winning three games in a row. Kasparov finally regained his composure and eventually clinched the match with a late victory. The 1987 match was notable for it's sensational finale. Kasparov approached the final game with a one point deficit, knowing that only a win would enable him to retain the title. When the game was adjourned overnight in a position where Kasparov had to win to stay champion, Spanish TV cleared its entire schedule so that the nail-biting conclusion could be watched live. A pre-internet global audience of millions was glued to their TV screens as Kasparov ground out his historic victory. In this volume Garry Kasparov (world champion between 1985 and 2000 and generally regarded as the greatest player ever) analyses in depth the clashes from 1986 and 1987, giving his opinion on the background to the matches as well as the games themselves.

Between 1984 and 1990 Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov contested five long matches for the World Championship. This fourth volume of the series 'Garry Kasparov on Modern Chess' concentrates on all the games played between the two from 1988 to the present day and features their fifth World Championship match played in New York and Lyon 1990. The period after 1990 was also a fascinating one in the chess world as it witnessed the emergence of a new generation of young grandmasters capable of challenging the supremacy of the two 'K's'. Between them these great champions had dominated the chess landscape for the previous two decades and it has seemed unthinkable that a major tournament could be won by a different player. Now, however, grandmasters such as Viswanathan Anand, Vassily Ivanchuk, Nigel Short, Boris Gelfand, Vladimir Kramnik and Veselin Topalov arrived on the scene and proved themselves capable of competing successfully at the very highest levels. This period also witnessed an increasing disatisfaction amongst the world elite with the traditional ruling body, FIDE (the World Chess Federation). This led to attempts by the leading grandmasters to organise the World Championship cycle outside of FIDE's jurisdiction. In the late 1980s the Grandmasters Assocation (GMA) was created and was responsible for the organisation of the World Cup - a tournament championship of the world's leading chess players. Another organisation, the Professional Chessplayers Association (PCA) followed in 1993. In this volume Garry Kasparov (world champion between 1985 and 2000 and generally regarded as the greatest player ever) analyses in depth all the games and matches he played against his great rival Anatoly Karpov from 1988 to the present day. Kasparov was personally involved in the creation of both the GMA and PCA and gives a fascinating insight into this important time in chess history.

The history of sport has seen many great gladiatorial clashes: Ali v Frazier in boxing, McEnroe v Borg in tennis, Prost v Senna in motor racing. None however can quite compare to the intensity of the rivalry between those two great world chess champions: Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov. Between 1984 and 1990 they contested an astonishing five World Championship matches consisting of 144 individual encounters. This volume concentrates on the first two of those matches. – The epic 1984/85 contest which was lasted six months before being controversially halted "without result" by the then President of FIDE Florencio Campomanes. – The 1985 match when Kasparov brilliantly won the final game to take the title and become - at the age of 22 - the youngest ever world champion. Great chess contests have often had resonances extending beyond the 64 squares. The Fischer v Spassky match was played during the Cold War with both champions being perceived as the finest products of their respective ideologies. The Karpov v Korchnoi battles (three matches between 1974 and 1981) were lent an edge with Karpov being a Russian hero of the pre-Glasnost era whilst Korchnoi was the disaffected dissident. The Kasparov v Karpov encounters mirrored a battle between the new Russia and old Russia with Kasparov seen as a symbol of the new ideology emerging under Gorbachev whereas Karpov was seen to represent the old regime of die-hard Communists such as Brezhnev. In this volume Garry Kasparov (world champion between 1985 and 2000 and generally regarded as the greatest player ever) analyses in depth the clashes from 1984 and 1985, giving his opinions both on the political machinations surrounding the matches as well as the games themselves.