Russian chess player who started off his playing career by annexing the Junior World Championship (not won by a Russian since [Boris Spassky]?), everything sky-rocketed from there.
After the Junior world championship, Karpov was a "mere" grandmaster, but in the following year there was a "quantum leap" in his playing strength. The first Candidates cycle (1974) he participated in was the one to find a challenger for the then World Champion, Bobby Fischer. Karpov beat [Robert Byrne]? in the first Candidates match to face the ex-World Champion Boris Spassky in the next round. Karpov was on record to say that it would be Spassky that would win the Candidates cycle to face Fischer, but Karpov would win the following Candidates cycle (1977).
The Spassky-Karpov match was an awesome spectacle. Tenacious and aggressive play from Karpov secured him a memorable win (an exquisite Sicilian Scheveningen was probably the game of the match). The Candidates final match was against fellow Russian [Viktor Korchnoi]?, a notable fighting player. Intense games were fought, one "opening laboratory" win against the Sicilian Dragon, and Karpov had achieved the right to challenge Fischer for the World Championship.
For a variety of reasons, Fischer refused to defend his title, and resigned it when his list of demands were not met. This thrust the young Karpov into the role of World Champion without beating the reigning one. There was always the thought that Karpov was just a paper world champion - it was given to him.
Karpov's reply to that was to create the most phenomenal streak of tournament wins against the strongest players in the world over the next ten years. This tournament success eclipsed the pre-war tournament record of [Alexander Alexhine]?, and was thought to be unmatchable in today's tournament standards.
Karpov's playing style was solid positionally based, taking no risks but reacting mercilessly to any tiny errors made by his opponents. People believed Karpov's style was bland, but looking at games such as Torre-Karpov, Bad Lautenberg 1976 shows Karpov provoking his opponent then counterattacking through the centre with a pawn sacrifice. Karpov's mastery of the ending was unparallelled, although he kept his openings repertoire relatively narrow, his middlegame was always solid.
One of the first pinnacles of Karpov's tournament career was the exceptional Montreal "Super-Grandmaster" tournament in 1979, where he ended joint first with Mikhail Tal ahead of a field of superb grandmasters (Timman, Ljubojevic, Spassky, Kavalek).
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