Anatoly Evgenyevich Karpov was born in 1951 in
the town of Zlatoust located in the Southern
Ural Mountains in the USSR. He learned to play
chess at four years old and earned the World
Junior Championship in 1969. In 1970 he became
an International Grandmaster.
A World Championship Candidate in 1973 he defeated Viktor Korchnoi in the 1974 Candidates' final to earn the right to a match with World Champion Robert James Fischer. When FIDE declared Fischer forfeited, Karpov became the 12th World Chess Champion, the youngest since Mikhail Tal in 1960.
Karpov defended the championship twice against Korchnoi, but in 1985 he lost it to Garry Kasparov. He played three more matches with Kasparov in 1986, 1987 and 1990. Although he failed to defeat Kasparov in each case, all the matches were close.
Three times Soviet Champion 1976 1983 and 1988 sharing the title with Kasparov. In 1993 Karpov regained the FIDE title after Kasparov broke away from the organization. He successfully defended his title against Gata Kamsky in 1996 and Viswanathan Anand in 1998. In 1999 FIDE changed the rules, deciding that the World Champion would be determined by an annual knockout tournament, and Karpov retired from championship competition.
Karpov is the major winner of tournaments in History. More than 100 victories between open and closed tournaments. For this contributed a well-selected repertoire of openings, a strong defensive presence (Kasparov believes that Karpov is the best I've ever been on defense.) and an endgame technique which is beyond the books, like Lasker, Capablanca, Fischer and Kramnik.
Good Bridge player, was a sensation the opening of own Circle of Bridge occurred in the 90s in downtown Moscow.