World Chess Championship 1984

The World Chess Championship 1984 was a match between challenger Garry Kasparov and defending champion Anatoly Karpov in Moscow from 10 September 1984 to 15 February 1985 for the World Chess Championship title. After 5 months and 48 games, the match was abandoned in controversial circumstances with Karpov leading five wins to three (with 40 draws), and replayed in the World Chess Championship 1985.

Three Interzonal tournaments were held. The top two finishers in each qualified. Zoltán Ribli won the Las Palmas Interzonal ahead of 62-year-old former World Champion Vasily Smyslov. Kasparov, aged 19 years old at the time, won the Moscow Interzonal by a convincing 1½ point margin ahead of Alexander Beliavsky. The Toluca Interzonal was won jointly by Lajos Portisch and Eugenio Torre.

Tal and Andersson contested a playoff in Malmö for a reserve spot for the Candidates Tournament. The match ended 3–3; Tal became first reserve because of his better tie break score in the main event, but eventually no reserves were needed.

The six Interzonal qualifiers were joined by Viktor Korchnoi and Robert Hübner, the Candidates finalists from the previous cycle (World Chess Championship 1981). The eight players participated in a series of knockout matches. The winner was Garry Kasparov.

The Smyslov–Hübner match was originally tied at 5–5. After playing four extra games without breaking the tie, the match was resolved by a spin of the roulette wheel.

Politics threatened Kasparov's semi-final match against Viktor Korchnoi, which was scheduled to be played in Pasadena, California. Korchnoi had defected from the Soviet Union in 1976, and was at that time the strongest active non-Soviet player. Various political manoeuvres prevented Kasparov from playing Korchnoi in the United States, and Kasparov forfeited the match. This was resolved when Korchnoi agreed for the match to be replayed in London, along with the Vasily Smyslov vs. Zoltán Ribli match. The Korchnoi–Kasparov match was put together on short notice by Raymond Keene. Kasparov lost the first game, but subsequently won four, prevailing in the match with a total score of 7–4.

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