Anatoly Karpov's Immortal Chess Game Against Veselin Topalov

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Last updated 01 abril 2025

Anatoly Karpov's Immortal Chess Game Against Veselin Topalov

Today we are going to see the former world champion Anatoly Karpov’s immortal chess game – he played this game against the Bulgarian grandmaster Veselin Topalov in Linares in the year 1994. The game is known for Karpov’s genius positional play combined with an aggressive attack. In the middlegame, Topalov made a mistake of playing g6, when his bishop was developed to e7, therefore creating a dark-square weakness around his king. Eventually, his pawn structure was very weak and all his pieces were stuck on the queenside. It was at this moment, Karpov sacrificed his rook, breaking into Topalov’s pawn structure. And Karpov got a compensation of a knight and two pawns for his rook. A few moves later, he sacrificed his second rook for Topalov’s only minor piece, the bishop, left on the board. This led to complete destruction on the Black’s kingside, and Topalov resigned in the end. 💡 Trivia: Did you know that Topalov lost another game in a similar fashion? It was Garry Kasparov’s immortal game, where Kasparov sacrificed both his rooks, just like Karpov did in this game, and crushed Topalov, watch that game here – IM Asaf Givon’s analysis and CM Tryfon Gavriel’s analysis. Watch the video analysis by Aggelos Kesaris below: You may also like to watch our video lesson about the power of the King in the endgame.