Playing Style
Andersson is a very solid positional player. He draws a high percentage of his games against fellow grandmasters (Kaufeld & Kern 2011:12). He is renowned as a great player of endgames, especially rook endgames, and is famous for winning seemingly "unwinnable" endgames, often in very long games (Kaufeld & Kern 2011:167). Chess writer Dennis Monokroussos once remarked of Andersson's style, "For most of us, if we're playing a peer and major exchanges occur, a quick draw is the likely result for Andersson exchanges often not the prelude to a quick draw but the signal that it time for his opponent to start suffering." He is known as one of the toughest players in the world to defeat, but ironically his best-known game is a loss: a crushing defeat in 30 moves to 18-year-old Garry Kasparov at Tilburg, 1981. After the game he reportedly said, "I will not play against Kasparov any more!" However, they have met in about 20 subsequent tournaments, and close to 75% of their games ended in a draw.
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