How GMs Save Lost Positions - GM Mihail Marin | Korchnoi's Great Escape

How do grandmasters save lost positions? Logically, they shouldn't be able to. As Wilhelm Steinitz explained more than a century ago, if both sides play the best moves the character of a position can change but the evaluation cannot — a lost position stays lost. The only way out is to make the opponent go wrong. GM Mihail Marin shows how that works in practice through two games in which Lajos Portisch outplayed a world-class opponent and still failed to win. Against Kasparov (Moscow 1981) and against Korchnoi (Candidates quarterfinal 1983), Portisch reached a decisive advantage and then relaxed one move too early, avoiding the sharp continuations that still demanded real calculation. Both defenders had created exactly that problem on purpose: Kasparov's ...c4 and Korchnoi's ...f4 are almost mirror images of the same practical idea — hand the winning side a decision he doesn't want to make. The lesson runs in both directions. When you are lost, stop hoping and start creating problems. When you are winning, keep calculating at full power until the game is actually over. ⏱ Timestamps: 00:00 Video overview 01:05 Introduction 03:59 Portisch-Kasparov, Moscow 1981 05:10 White gets a decisive advantage 05:43 Black uses his best chance 07:48 The winning move Portisch missed in his calculation 13:12 The combination leading to a draw 14:19 Portisch-Korchnoi, Candidates 1983 15:29 The winning exchange sacrifice 18:17 A desperate counterattack 19:12 Grabbing a pawn would have won for White 25:40 Black's saving combination 26:05 White's final mistake allows a winning combination 📚 Topics covered: saving lost positions, Wilhelm Steinitz, evaluation and best play, provoking mistakes, practical counterplay, premature relaxation, Lajos Portisch, Garry Kasparov, Viktor Korchnoi, Moscow 1981, Candidates 1983, chess psychology ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📘 Recommended Resources ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔗 Learn from the Legends — 3rd Edition: https://www.newinchess.com/learn-from... 🔗 Get ChessBase — the ultimate tool for chess analysis and preparation: https://shop.chessbase.com/en/categor... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎓 About GM Mihail Marin Grandmaster Mihail Marin is a three-time Romanian National Champion, Olympic medalist, former second to Judit Polgar, ChessBase author, and Chessable instructor. He currently coaches the Italian women's national team. This channel provides advanced chess lessons focused on opening strategy, positional play, middlegame understanding, and endgame technique — designed for ambitious players rated 1400–2400+ who want real improvement. 🔔 New in-depth chess lessons every week — subscribe and hit the notification bell! 💡 If this video helped you, consider using Super Thanks to support the channel! 📩 Coaching inquiries & business proposals: [email protected] #chess #grandmaster #chesslesson #chessanalysis #chessstrategy #chessimprovement #marinchess #chessmasterclass #chesstactics #middlegame #kasparov #korchnoi #portisch #chesslegends #chesshistory #chessgenius