Practical Considerations
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Sometimes practical considerations are taken into account. In 1977 Viktor Korchnoi and former World Champion Tigran Petrosian played a twelve-game quarter-final Candidates Match to ultimately determine the challenger for the 1978 World Championship. After eleven games Korchnoi was leading by one point, so he only needed a draw in the final game to advance to the semi-finals. Korchnoi, as Black, was winning this game but he offered a draw after 40 moves. According to Edmar Mednis, it was "gentlemanly and the practical thing to do" (Mednis 1993:206–7). Korchnoi went on to unsuccessfully challenge Anatoly Karpov for the World Championship.
Read more about this topic: Draw By Agreement
Famous quotes containing the word practical:
“General scepticism is the live mental attitude of refusing to conclude. It is a permanent torpor of the will, renewing itself in detail towards each successive thesis that offers, and you can no more kill it off by logic than you can kill off obstinacy or practical joking.”
—William James (1842–1910)