The diagram, a followup to my recent post ECO B33 & B44, illustrates a couple of famous and surprising Sicilian ...d5 moves that occurred in world class matches. On the left is a position from game one of Fischer - Petrosian, 1971 Candidates Final; on the right is game 16 of Karpov - Kasparov, World Championship 1985. What finally became of these two variations, which kept chess analysts busy ...

Black must have thought he had won this 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 e6 5.Bg5 h6 6.Bxf6 Qxf6 7.e3 Nd7 8.Bd3 dxc4 9.Bxc4 g6 10.O-O Bg7 11.b4 O-O 12.a4 Qe7 13.Rb1 a5 14.bxa5 Rxa5 15.Qc2 b6 16.e4 c5 17.d5 Bxc3 18.Qxc3 Rxa4 19.Qc2 Ra7 20.Qd2 exd5 21.exd5 Kg7 22.Rfe1 Qf6 23.Bb5 Rd8 24.Rbd1 Bb7 25.Qe3 Nf8 26.Ne5 h5 27.Bc6 Bc8 28.h3 Re7 29.f4 h4 30.Qf2 Kg8 31.Rb1 g5 32.fxg5 Qxg5 33.Nf3 Rxe1+ ...

... checkmated. In the 16th game, Black resigned. The first four moves of both games seem to correspond to some things that have happened in the text so far, so I am going with that. If anyone out there has a copy of the book and wants to follow the plot on the chessboard, the game can be found here: www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame And people ask writers where do they get their ideas