In MORTAL GAMES: THE TURBULENT GENIUS OF GARRY KASPAROV Fred Waitzkin relates how during one of his world championship tournaments against Anatoly Karpov, Kasparov's business partner Andrew Page played a "dirty trick" to upset Karpov.

They were all flying from New York City to Lyon France. The tournament organizers had given First Class tickets to both Kasparov and Karpov and Economy class tickets to their trainers. Page bought Business Class tickets for Garry's grandmaster trainers, paying for them out of his own pocket. Karpov's group was made to feel angry and resentful of their inferior accomodations.

Later, Karpov may have gotten a blow of his own in. Gata Kamsky proposed that their chess organization change the rules so that defending world championships would have to compete to play in the world championship tournament just like all other contenders, instead of simply defending their title against the winner of the playoffs.

It was designed to make defending champion Kasparov angry, and one of his people told Waitzkin the idea probably came from Karpov who was friends with Kamsky. Gata was a teenager at the time and not likely to propose such a major rule change on his own. But if Karpov had proposed it directly, it would just have made him look bad, since he was the world's number two player and would therefore most benefit from it.

Bottom line: learn the 36 Strategies if only to recognize when your opponent tries to use one of them against you.

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c 2006 by Richard Stooker Read more about the world's greatest game at Richard's Chess Games blog