The 1978 World Championship's Parapsychologist Scandal
The 1978 World Chess Championship between Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi, played in Baguio City in the Philippines from July to October, is remembered as much for a man in the front row as for the chess. Korchnoi's camp accused the Soviet delegation of using Dr. Vladimir Zukhar, a psychologist seated prominently in the audience, to psychologically unsettle him. Korchnoi's team responded with mirrored sunglasses, meant to reflect Zukhar's stare back at him.
Why this match was already tense before Zukhar
Korchnoi had defected from the Soviet Union two years earlier, in 1976, and was playing as a stateless challenger against the Soviet chess establishment's own champion. That backdrop alone made Baguio one of the most politically loaded matches in the sport's history before either side ever mentioned psychology.
The staring, and the sunglasses
Zukhar, a psychologist with the Soviet delegation, was moved to sit in the very front row for critical games, close enough to maintain a fixed stare at Korchnoi throughout play. Korchnoi's team's countermeasure, wearing mirrored sunglasses to deflect the gaze, sounds like theatre because it largely was, but it reflected a genuine belief on Korchnoi's side that the seating arrangement was a deliberate psychological tactic, not an accident.
The chess underneath the sideshow
Strip away the parapsychology and Baguio was still a brutal, high-quality fight: 32 games, Korchnoi clawing back from 5-2 down to level the match at 5-5 before Karpov won the decisive final game to close it out 6-5. That comeback, five wins for Korchnoi against a field this strong, deserves more attention than the sunglasses usually leave room for.
How the final game actually finished
In Game 32, Karpov built an overwhelming positional grip with quiet, accurate moves rather than anything flashy, Korchnoi's own 11...Nh5-f6 manoeuvre cost him a tempo he never recovered, and Karpov's pawn thrust 41.b6 sealed the position before Korchnoi resigned. It was patient, technical chess deciding a title that the surrounding theatre made look like anything but a technical contest.
The real lesson underneath the theatre
Baguio is a reminder that the psychological side of chess is real, both players clearly believed it mattered enough to escalate, but it rarely wins games on its own. Karpov won the match with prophylaxis and endgame technique, not with Zukhar's stare, and Korchnoi's five wins came from real chess, not from a pair of sunglasses.