LaviChess

Pia Cramling vs. Korchnoi, London 1982

In the summer of 1982, 19-year-old Pia Cramling sat across from Viktor Korchnoi, who had twice played for the world title. In time trouble he offered her a knight. She took it, and then she could not escape perpetual check.

  • WhitePia Cramling
  • BlackViktor Korchnoi
  • WhereLondon
  • WhenAugust 31, 1982
  • EventLloyds Bank Masters, round 7
  • Result½–½, draw
  • OpeningRuy Lopez (C77)
  • Length42 moves

In the summer of 1982 Pia Cramling was 19. At the Lloyds Bank Masters in London she was paired with Viktor Korchnoi, who had played world championship matches against Anatoly Karpov in both 1978 and 1981.

He was one of the players she admired most, both for his enormous fighting spirit and for the problems he had had in the Soviet Union. “It was like a dream for me to play him,” she said in 1999 in the chess magazine Kingpin.

Korchnoi surprised everyone by thinking for more than an hour over his fifth move. “So it was not so strange that we both (this is my bad habit) got short of time,” Pia remembered.

The players

Pia Cramling (born 1963) from Stockholm became Sweden's first female grandmaster in 1992, and the fifth woman in the world to hold the title. In London in 1982 she made her first norm, one of the steps toward the International Master title.

Viktor Korchnoi (1931–2016) from Leningrad is counted among the strongest players never to become world champion. He left the Soviet Union in 1976 and later became a Swiss citizen. At 75 he won the World Senior Championship.

Read more about Pia Cramling among the great chess players.

The game move by move

Step through with the arrows or tap a move. Moves with a dot have a comment.

abcdefgh87654321

Pia Cramling has the white pieces, Viktor Korchnoi the black.

  1. 1.
  2. 2.
  3. 3.
  4. 4.
  5. 5.
  6. 6.
  7. 7.
  8. 8.
  9. 9.
  10. 10.
  11. 11.
  12. 12.
  13. 13.
  14. 14.
  15. 15.
  16. 16.
  17. 17.
  18. 18.
  19. 19.
  20. 20.
  21. 21.
  22. 22.
  23. 23.
  24. 24.
  25. 25.
  26. 26.
  27. 27.
  28. 28.
  29. 29.
  30. 30.
  31. 31.
  32. 32.
  33. 33.
  34. 34.
  35. 35.
  36. 36.
  37. 37.
  38. 38.
  39. 39.
  40. 40.
  41. 41.
  42. 42.…
Open on the analysis board

Watch the game on the living board

Play like Cramling

Guess the moves Cramling played, one at a time. The move from the game earns two points, and a move Lavi thinks is about as good earns one. The other side's moves and the game's notes come as you go.

Play like CramlingPlay like Korchnoi

The moments that decided it

abcdefgh87654321
After 37…Nxg2: Korchnoi attacks with queen and knight, but his own king is exposed.
abcdefgh87654321
After 38…Ne3: Korchnoi offers the knight. 39.Qxf7 would have won, 39.fxe3 led to perpetual check.

The end

abcdefgh87654321
The final position after 42.Kh1. Draw.

Why the game is famous

“The fact that I, a 19-year-old-girl, had made a draw with World Championship challenger Korchnoi caused a sensation,” Pia Cramling wrote in 1999. “After the game a huge crowd of players came over to analyse. To sit there opposite Korchnoi with all these famous grandmasters analysing my game was unbelievable.”

Two years later Tidskrift för Schack wrote that Pia had missed a “mate in two” in time trouble. There was no mate in two, but the win was there, just as Pia herself has told it. At Biel in 1984 they met again, and that time Pia won.

The whole game with notes, as text

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. d4 exd4 Korchnoi thought for more than an hour over this move, Pia said later. 6. O-O Be7 7. Re1 O-O 8. e5 Ne8 9. c3 dxc3 10. Nxc3 d6 11. exd6 cxd6 12. Nd5 Bf6 13. Be3 Be6 14. Bb6 Qd7 15. Rc1 Bxb2 16. Rc2 Bf6 17. Nb4 Bd8 18. Rxc6 Pia gives the rook for the knight, and a series of trades follows. 18… bxc6 19. Bxc6 Qc8 20. Bxd8 Qxd8 21. Bxa8 Qxa8 After the trades White has two knights against bishop and knight, but is a pawn down. 22. Ng5 a5 23. Qc2 Nf6 24. Nc6 Re8 25. h3 a4 26. Rd1 h6 27. Nxe6 Rxe6 28. Rb1 Nd7 29. Rb4 Qe8 30. Qxa4 White wins the pawn back. Both sides now have a queen, a rook and a knight, the only pieces on the board, as Pia described it. 30… Nc5 31. Qb5 Kh7 32. Rd4 Rg6 33. Kh2 Qe1 Korchnoi goes on the attack with his queen, and soon the knight follows. 34. Qb2 Qf1 35. Rg4 Nd3 36. Qc2 Ne1 37. Qf5 Nxg2 The knight takes the pawn in front of the white king. But Korchnoi's own king is exposed, and Pia gets a dangerous counterattack. 38. Ne7 The only move that wins. The knight attacks the rook on g6, which is already pinned to the king by the queen on f5. 38… Ne3 Korchnoi offers the knight. If White takes it, the black queen gets at the white king. 39. fxe3 Pia took the knight. “When Viktor Korchnoi offered me his knight I gladly took it, but then found that I could not escape perpetual check,” she wrote. With 39.Qxf7 she would have won: the queen takes the pawn and threatens mate on g8. “A simple queen move, threatening mate in one, would have given me the full point!” 39… Qe2+ 40. Kh1 Qe1+ 41. Kh2 Qe2+ 42. Kh1 A draw. The black queen can give check on e1 and e2 for as long as she likes.

PGN – the game as text for other chess programs
[Event "Lloyds Bank Masters, round 7"]
[Site "London"]
[Date "1982.08.31"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Pia Cramling"]
[Black "Viktor Korchnoi"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[ECO "C77"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. d4 exd4 6. O-O Be7 7. Re1 O-O 8. e5 Ne8 9. c3 dxc3 10. Nxc3 d6 11. exd6 cxd6 12. Nd5 Bf6 13. Be3 Be6 14. Bb6 Qd7 15. Rc1 Bxb2 16. Rc2 Bf6 17. Nb4 Bd8 18. Rxc6 bxc6 19. Bxc6 Qc8 20. Bxd8 Qxd8 21. Bxa8 Qxa8 22. Ng5 a5 23. Qc2 Nf6 24. Nc6 Re8 25. h3 a4 26. Rd1 h6 27. Nxe6 Rxe6 28. Rb1 Nd7 29. Rb4 Qe8 30. Qxa4 Nc5 31. Qb5 Kh7 32. Rd4 Rg6 33. Kh2 Qe1 34. Qb2 Qf1 35. Rg4 Nd3 36. Qc2 Ne1 37. Qf5 Nxg2 38. Ne7 Ne3 39. fxe3 Qe2+ 40. Kh1 Qe1+ 41. Kh2 Qe2+ 42. Kh1 1/2-1/2

Download .pgn

Sources

  • ChessBase: Ten highlights in the life and career of chess grandmaster Pia Cramling (Eduard Frey, 2023), with Pia Cramling's own words from Kingpin no. 31 (1999) and the game
  • PGN Mentor, Korchnoi.pgn
  • Tidskrift för Schack 1984 no. 6 (p. 214)
  • Wikipedia: Viktor Korchnoi

The moves compared in two sources (PGN Mentor and the game that goes with the ChessBase article): identical, 83 half-moves. The date, August 31, 1982, is in the ChessBase game, the round in both. In 1984 Tidskrift för Schack, the Swedish federation's magazine, wrote that Pia had missed a “mate in two” in time trouble. We have tested every position in the game with White to move: there was never a mate in two. The win Pia herself describes was there, though, with 39.Qxf7. Every move has also been replayed by computer and checked against the rules of chess.

All famous games

Updated November 14, 2026