Peru: Chess World Champions Visit Lima

For two days, Lima hosted the two chess champions, Gary Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov. They both came for an exhibition game, where they played against 25 children: 20 of them were selected by the Peruvian Federation of Chess and the rest were drawn from the audience. Although football is the king of all sports in Peru, and in spite of Peruvian chess being banned from international competitions, the news didn't go unnoticed for some bloggers.

Back in May, Hugo Melo, blogger of El ajedrez es cultura (Chess is culture), quoted a story on his blog [es] about the visit:

[El Instituto Peruano de Deportes (IPD)] destacó que la llegada de estas “dos leyendas vivas del ajedrez”, cuya fecha de arribo no precisó, “será de mucho provecho para los ajedrecistas nacionales”.
[…]
“Sus experiencias como campeones mundiales sin duda serán captadas por nuestros jóvenes deportistas”, acotó.

[The Peruvian Sports Institute (IPD, according to its Spanish name)] highlighted that the arrival of these “two living chess legends”, whose arrival date is still unknown, “will be very helpful for the local chess players”.
[…]
“Their experiences as world champions will undoubtely be useful to our young players”, noted.

On his blog Nido de erRatas [es], Carlos Tovar shares some history of both players:

Karpov y Kasparov protagonizaron la más prolongada rivalidad sobre el tablero en la historia del ajedrez. El estilo de Karpov, racional y lógico, con una marcada tendencia hacia posiciones claras en las cuales un cálculo preciso permitía encontrar la variante ganadora, contrastaba notoriamente con el estilo de Kasparov, marcadamente táctico y dinámico, con tendencia hacia posiciones complicadas, en las cuales el cálculo no bastaba para orientarse durante el juego, sino que debía ser auxiliado por la intuición.

Karpov and Kasparov were in the middle of the longest rivalry on a chessboard in the history of chess. Karpov's style, rational and logical, with an evident tendency towards clear positions in which a precise calculation made finding the winning variant possible, was in obvious contrast with Kasparov's style, sharply technical and dynamic, with a tendency for complicated positions, in which calculations weren't enough for orientation during the match, but rather had to be aided by intuition.

This ancient rivalry has become a good friendship, as Monty Python summarizes [es] in the blog Otras tardes :

Karpov también aprovechará su estadía en Perú para promover su candidatura a la presidencia de la Federación Internacional de Ajedrez (FIDE), que cuenta con el apoyo de su ex rival Kasparov.

Karpov will take advantage of his stay in Perú to promote his candidacy for president of the World Chess Federation -FIDE, which is endorsed by his ex rival Kasparov.

On Tuesday June 22, it took less than two hours for both champions to beat all 25 selected children. Aside from their nervousness, the children were very confident making their moves. That same day, Karpov and Kasparov took off to Bolivia.

Christian Torres (@vergato) thanked the two chess stars through Twitter:

Maestros gracias por venir!!! 2 Genios en Peru …

Masters thank you for coming!!! 2 Geniuses in Peru …
Thumbnail image by Flickr user Mukumbura, used under a Creative Commons license

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