Korchnoi's Events 2004-05

Continuing with Korchnoi's Events 2002-03, I added another two years of Korchnoi's career to Viktor Korchnoi's Tournament, Match, and Exhibition Record (1946-2005). Yearend 2004 saw the first (and only) tournament game between former World Champion challenger Korchnoi and future World Champion Magnus Carlsen; see Viktor Korchnoi vs Magnus Carlsen; SmartFish Chess Masters (2004) (chessgames.com), subtitled '"Father Time and Baby New Year" (game of the day Jan-01-07)'.

The comments to the game indicate that Carlsen should have drawn...

Dec-29-04: The official site says Magnus lost on time because he had missed out a line in his scoresheet by mistake and therefore thought he had already made 40 moves. Korchnoi agreed that the final position couldn't be won.

...and mention previous instances of the same:-

Dec-30-04: Lajos Portisch had the same mistake once against a FIDE-master, because of the scoresheet: that paper's rows were so dense that the 8-time-world championship candidate wrote one move into two gaps! His opponent did the same so the grandmaster was outfoxed by this devilish trick and lost on time after 39 moves.

Jan-05-05: Another infamous time loss because of the score-sheet was : J Mason vs Tarrasch, 1895.

The year-over-year record shows that GM Korchnoi was playing fewer events each year:-

• 2003: 12 events
• 2004: 10 events
• 2005: 7 events

According to a previous post, Korchnoi's Events 1998-99 / 2014-15, he still had ten years of chess in his future.