Whoever it is who keeps the annals of sport should make a new entry in the chapter on fabled rivalries. No two chess masters have ever played each other so many times in such a short period as Gary Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov: an extraordinary 96 games during the past two years. When they finished last week, Kasparov had won the latest match and, by a single point, the entire series.
The marathon began in Moscow in September 1984, when the athletic, aggressive Kasparov, then 21, challenged the meticulous end-gamesman Karpov, then 33, world champion for the nine previous years and...