Alekhine Memorial 1971

Moscow's Alekhine Memorial drew one of the strongest fields of its era — a reigning World Champion and three former ones among eighteen players. The tournament belonged to two Soviets: the great attacking artist Leonid Stein and a twenty-year-old named Anatoly Karpov, who shared first and served notice of the champion he was about to become.

◇A memorial worthy of the name

The second of the Soviet Alekhine Memorials assembled a field to match the honour. Reigning World Champion Boris Spassky played, as did former champions Tigran Petrosian, Mikhail Tal and Vasily Smyslov, alongside Viktor Korchnoi, David Bronstein, Vlastimil Hort, Robert Byrne, Fridrik Olafsson and a rising Vladimir Tukmakov — eighteen players in a single round-robin over seventeen rounds.

Into this company stepped Anatoly Karpov, twenty years old and only a year past his grandmaster title. It was the kind of tournament in which young talents were expected to learn, not to win.

◇Karpov and Stein share first

Karpov ended up sharing first with Leonid Stein, the three-time Soviet champion then at the height of his powers, on 11 points from 17 games, half a point ahead of Smyslov (10½) and clear of Petrosian and Tukmakov (10) and of Spassky and Tal (9½).

For Karpov it was a breakthrough: his first major triumph in elite adult company, over a field that included every living Soviet world champion. Within four years he would hold the world title himself, opening a reign that would define the next decade of chess. Stein, tragically, would die of a heart attack in 1973 at just thirty-eight; this shared victory stands among the finest results of his short, brilliant career.