The Road to Baguio City
By 1978, the chess world had been waiting three years for a rematch between Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi. Their first encounter, in 1974, had been a Candidates Final rather than a World Championship match, with Karpov winning 12.5-11.5 to earn the right to face Bobby Fischer. Fischer's refusal to defend his title in 1975 meant Karpov was crowned world champion without playing a match, a circumstance that gnawed at the legitimacy of his reign and fuelled Korchnoi's resentment.
Korchnoi had defected from the Soviet Union in 1976 and emerged from the 1977-78 Candidates cycle as the clear challenger, defeating Lev Polugaevsky and Boris Spassky en route. His political status made FIDE's task of organising the match deeply complicated. Baguio City in the Philippines was eventually agreed as the venue, a mountain resort city offering cooler temperatures than Manila. The match began on 18 July 1978 and would not conclude until 18 October, making it one of the longest World Championship encounters in history. The rules specified first to six wins, draws not counting, with no maximum game limit.
Espionage, Parapsychology and the Politics of the Board
Even before the first pawn was moved, the match was engulfed in controversy. Korchnoi had brought with him two members of the Ananda Marga sect as personal assistants, figures the Soviet delegation regarded with deep suspicion. In retaliation, or so Korchnoi's camp believed, the Soviets deployed Dr Vladimir Zukhar, a parapsychologist and professor, who occupied a front-row seat and fixed Korchnoi with an unblinking stare throughout multiple games. Korchnoi's team filed formal protests demanding Zukhar be removed or seated no closer than the fourth row. FIDE officials found themselves adjudicating not chess disputes but accusations of telepathic interference.
The atmosphere grew darker as the match progressed. Korchnoi's son Igor had been prevented from leaving the Soviet Union and was subsequently conscripted into the Soviet army. Korchnoi wore tinted glasses to avoid Zukhar's gaze. Disputes erupted over yoghurt delivered to Karpov mid-game, with Korchnoi's team demanding to know whether the flavour held coded messages. What might seem farcical in retrospect was deadly serious to the participants. For famous chess players of that era, the board and the political arena were never fully separate.
The Course of the Match
Karpov established an early lead, building a commanding 4-1 advantage by the midpoint of the match. The champion's play was characterised by the quiet, suffocating positional pressure that defined his style: patiently accumulating small advantages, avoiding tactical complexity, and converting endgames with clinical precision. Chess analysts studying these games for the famous chess games archive note that Karpov's technique during this period was among the most refined seen in championship chess since Capablanca.
Korchnoi refused to capitulate. After falling to 5-2 down, he produced a sequence of results that startled the chess world, winning three games across a period of intense fighting chess to level the match at 5-5. Games 27 and 28 were drawn after exhausting endgame battles, but Games 24, 26, and 29 all went to Korchnoi, each one clawed back through sheer combative will. The match had suddenly become the most dramatic in the history of the World Chess Championships.
The Decisive 32nd Game
With the match level at 5-5 and the next win taking the title, Game 32 was played on 17-18 October 1978. Karpov, playing White, chose the Nimzo-Indian Defence complex after 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4. The game entered a long positional struggle in which Karpov demonstrated his supreme endgame technique, converting a minor advantage in a rook and pawns ending over the course of 41 moves. When Korchnoi resigned, the match was over. Karpov had retained his title by the narrowest possible margin.
The game itself was not a brilliancy in the manner of the famous chess games of earlier eras, but it was a masterclass in endgame conversion under extreme pressure. Karpov had needed to win the final game with everything on the line, and he did so with the composure that would define his entire championship tenure.
Legacy and Historical Significance
The 1978 match stands as one of the defining encounters in twentieth-century chess history, not only for its quality but for what it represented. It was the first World Championship match in which a Soviet defector faced a Soviet champion, making it an explicit Cold War confrontation in miniature. The psychological warfare, the parapsychologist, the protests over yoghurt and seating positions: all of it fed a narrative that gripped audiences far beyond the chess world.
For students of chess history, the match also marked a pivotal point in understanding Karpov's strengths and the nature of his dominance. He had been criticised for inheriting the title without a fight in 1975. By surviving Korchnoi's comeback from 5-2 to win the 32nd and final game, he silenced many of those doubts. He would defend the title again against Korchnoi in 1981 and then face a still more formidable challenge from Garry Kasparov beginning in 1984. The famous chess players of any generation are tested by adversity, and Baguio City was Karpov's first true test.
The Equipment and the Standard
The pieces used in Baguio City were manufactured to the Staunton standard, the universal pattern created by Jaques of London in 1849 and since adopted as the mandatory design under FIDE regulations. The Staunton chess set, whose design lineage runs directly from the Jaques workshop, had by 1978 been the global standard for championship chess for over a century. Every protest, every adjournment, every dramatic resignation in Baguio City took place across pieces that traced their form to that original Jaques design, unchanged in its essentials since Howard Staunton endorsed it in the 1840s.
Jaques of London — Making Chess Sets Since 1849
FIDE regulations, which mandate the Staunton pattern originally created by Jaques of London in 1849, governed all equipment used in this match. The pieces on the board in Baguio City traced their design lineage directly back to the Jaques workshop in London, where the standard was set over 175 years ago. Jaques of London, founded in 1795 and makers of the Staunton set from its first production, supplied the pattern that every serious chess match in the world has used ever since.
Shop Staunton Chess Sets →Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What was the final score of the 1978 World Chess Championship between Karpov and Korchnoi?
Anatoly Karpov retained his title by defeating Viktor Korchnoi with a score of 6 wins to 5, with 21 draws, across 32 games. The match was first to six wins, with draws not counting toward the winning total. Korchnoi came agonisingly close, at one point trailing 5-2 and then clawing back to 5-5. Karpov won the decisive 32nd game to clinch the match. The final tally was Karpov 6 wins, Korchnoi 5 wins, 21 draws, making it one of the most hard-fought championship matches in history. The match lasted from July 18 to October 18, 1978.
Q: Why was the 1978 World Chess Championship so politically controversial?
The match was steeped in Cold War politics because Korchnoi had defected from the Soviet Union in 1976, making him a stateless person and a symbol of Soviet defection. The Soviet state machine stood firmly behind Karpov, while Korchnoi played as a man without a country. Soviet officials in the delegation were widely suspected of using psychological tactics, including the presence of parapsychologist Vladimir Zukhar, who sat in the front rows and was accused by Korchnoi's camp of using hypnosis or telepathic disruption. The match became a proxy Cold War confrontation, with formal complaints, counter-complaints, and protest notes filed throughout. FIDE president Max Euwe was repeatedly called upon to adjudicate disputes that had little to do with chess.
Q: Who was Viktor Korchnoi and why did he defect from the Soviet Union?
Viktor Korchnoi was one of the strongest chess players of the 20th century, a grandmaster born in Leningrad in 1931 who had been a dominant figure in Soviet chess for decades. He defected to the West in July 1976 while in Amsterdam for a tournament, citing irreconcilable differences with Soviet chess authorities and the broader oppressive atmosphere of Soviet life. After his defection, Soviet authorities prevented his wife and son from leaving the USSR, and his son was later conscripted into the Soviet army as a form of pressure. These personal grievances made the 1978 championship match against the Soviet-backed Karpov an intensely personal as well as political confrontation. Korchnoi eventually settled in Switzerland and continued competing at the highest level into his eighties.
Q: What were the most notable games from the 1978 Karpov vs Korchnoi match?
Game 5 was an early landmark, with Karpov winning convincingly to establish an early lead using precise positional technique. Game 21 is regarded as particularly memorable: Korchnoi, facing a 5-2 deficit, produced one of his finest fighting performances to claw back momentum. Games 27 and 28 were both drawn in tense endgame struggles as Korchnoi fought back to level at 5-5. The decisive 32nd game saw Karpov play the Nimzo-Indian complex and grind down Korchnoi in an endgame lasting 41 moves, sealing the match and the championship. Korchnoi's comeback from 5-2 to 5-5 remains one of the most remarkable sequences in championship match history, combining fierce fighting chess with near-impossible psychological pressure.