Chess

THE PETROSIAN Memorial Tournament has just finished at the Cosmos Hotel in Moscow with 10 of the great Tigran Vartanovich's former colleagues and rivals gathered together to commemorate the 70th anniversary of his birth on 17 June 1929.

Petrosian, who died aged just 57 in 1984, became world champion in 1963 by defeating Mikhail Botvinnik and reigned until 1969 when Boris Spassky defeated him at the second attempt. A phenomenal positional player with a superb feeling for "harmony", he is sometimes seen as rather "drawish" since he had both an aversion to risk born of an extreme dislike of losing and a minimalist approach to winning which meant that he would happily settle for the smallest possible score that would guarantee victory.

But he could also show a much more overtly trenchant side of his chess character with "Nimzowitchian" provocation, as in the splendid finish below. There's a long appreciation of Petrosian by his former second Igor Zaitsev on the Club Kasparov website (www.clubkasparov.ru) and also notes on today's game by Garry Kasparov himself, which I've hugely condensed.

I fear that the tournament must have boasted both exemplary conditions and a less than energising prize fund, for Petrosian's former colleagues seem to have taken the drawish facet of his character to heart, surely setting a record with an extraordinary three decisive games out of 45 and a total of just 1,205 moves - there were 64 in the five games in round five - making an average of just over 26.8.

I'll return to this topic on Monday, but here are the final scores with (somewhat unchivalrously) the players' ages in brackets: Portisch (62) and Ivkov (65) 5/9; Hort (55), Smyslov (78), Balashov (50), Tseshkovsky (54) (who participated in two of the decisive games, beating Gligoric but losing to Ivkov - in the other Portisch beat Larsen), Taimanov (73) and Spassky (62) 4.5; Larsen (64) and Gligoric (76) 4.

Kasparov v Petrosian, Tilburg 1981

The game ended 32 ...Kb7 !!? 33 Bb4? Qe8! 34 Bd6 Ra8 35 Qb1 Kc6!! 36 Rba3? bxc4 37 Rxa6+ Rxa6 38 Rxa6+ Bb6 39 Bc5 Qd8 40 Qa1 Nxc5 41 dxc5 Kxc5 42 Ra4 0-1.

If 32 ...bxc4 33 Rxa6+! forced mate, 32 ...Bd6 was conceivable but Petrosian began an amazing king walk which totally bamboozled his already great opponent. Kasparov says that 33 Na3! was probably strong but he completely missed the wonderful 35 ...Kc6!! that Petrosian played almost instantly. 36 Bxc7! should still have drawn but Kasparov had "gone".