Viktor Korchnoi, plays tomorrow in the final tournament and you can meet or make a photo with him …
One night before, I was urgently taken to the hospital and Vladimir a Russian master,the first person that I knew firstly in emmigration, finds me in the bed with the serum that doctors had put on me. They suspect about serious abdominal complications. It’s Friday and I have to wait until Monday for the final decision … to do the operation or not.
Viktor Korchnoi, one of the greatest chess history legends, for almost sixty years on a podium, died a year ago. He has made two headlines(matt) for world title. After the most famous Spaski Fisher, he was forced to escape from the Sovietic Union. The Russians did not want to be ashamed once again before the genius Fisher and they force Korchnoi to leave Karpov in this giant duel. Korchnoi ‘heavily chewed’ the order, but after this, he made all the world’s federations aware of the scandal.
Korchnoi was in a good shape and at the age of 81,he was again declared the champion of Switzerland although before he had passed a cerebral hemorrhage. Known as ” Terrible Victor”, for many of the celebrities of this game’s history, he remains in the top ten of all history.
It was decided … The next day, after removed the serum, I abandoned the hospital as a thief and I arrived there twenty minutes before the start of the tour.
– Mr. Victor, – I said …. I grew up in Albania with the memory of your games. I come from the hospital just for a photo as a memory and I will go back there ….
Korchnoi just smiles, but agrees to give me only an autograph, while for photos, I should play with him on thetour …
Bite the teeth and accept the invitation after I pay the entry ticket .
I didn’t understand what really happened, but serum all night has made itself, and I have no emotions like usually.
After 12 matches, here I am facing “terrible Victor”. He plays for the first place and he has to win both games with me to take that place. I have to equate only one. I reach the second and so finish the first.Korçnoi laughs and says, “Why let him draw, you can win the second ….”I can say that it was enough with the first place, but I’m responding to him but laughing that it did not accept the picture …
-if I would win and you will be the fourth, no one in Albania would ever believe in a tournament I came out first and you the fourth.Victor laughs again. The next year, as he entered in the hall on the same tour, he asked to play a little practically. In the last turnout we again doubled and both went down. This time he came out first and I played almost the last official game for almost twenty years. Abdominal disease that became chronic by non-hospitalization at that time,interrupted me the illusion of chess playing.
I did not go back to the hospital, but I was delighted. The next day local newspapers and the tourbook wrote that a crazy man got up from the hospital where he needed surgert and with the same face as a dead man, beat the big Korçnoi…
One of the most beautiful memories of the chess field I’m sharing with those who read my site.
