Anatoly Karpov

Anatoly Karpov
Anatoly Karpov, 2006
Full name	Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov (Анатолий Евгеньевич Карпов)
Country	Soviet Union Russia
Born	(1951-05-23) May 23, 1951 (age 65) Zlatoust, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Title	Grandmaster (1970)
World Champion	1975–85 1993–99 (FIDE)
FIDE rating	2624 (March 2017)
Peak rating	2780 (July 1994)

Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov (Russian: Анато́лий Евге́ньевич Ка́рпов; born May 23, 1951) is a Russian chess grandmaster and former World Champion. He was the official world champion from 1975 to 1985 when he was defeated by Garry Kasparov. He played three matches against Kasparov for the title from 1986 to 1990, before becoming FIDE World Champion once again after Kasparov broke away from FIDE in 1993. He held the title until 1999, when he resigned his title in protest against FIDE's new world championship rules. For his decades-long standing among the world's elite, Karpov is considered by many to be one of the greatest players of all time.

His tournament successes include over 160 first-place finishes. He had a peak Elo rating of 2780, and his 90 total months at world number one is the second longest of all-time, behind only Garry Kasparov, since the inception of the FIDE ranking list in 1970.

Karpov was born on May 23, 1951 at Zlatoust in the Urals region of the former Soviet Union, and learned to play chess at the age of four. His early rise in chess was swift, as he became a Candidate Master by age eleven. At twelve, he was accepted into Mikhail Botvinnik's prestigious chess school, though Botvinnik made the following remark about the young Karpov: "The boy does not have a clue about chess, and there's no future at all for him in this profession." Karpov acknowledged that his understanding of chess theory was very confused at that time, and wrote later that the homework which Botvinnik assigned greatly helped him, since it required that he consult chess books and work diligently. Karpov improved so quickly under Botvinnik's tutelage that he became the youngest Soviet National Master in history at fifteen in 1966; this tied the record established by Boris Spassky in 1952.