[1] He had a peak Elo rating of 2780, and his 102 total months world number one is the third-longest of all time, behind Magnus Carlsen and Garry Kasparov.

Since 2006, he has chaired the Commission for Ecological Safety and Environmental Protection of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, and since 2007 he has been a member of the Public Council under the Ministry of Defence.

[2] Karpov was born into a Russian family on May 23, 1951,[3][4] in Zlatoust, in the Urals region of the former Soviet Union, and learned to play chess at the age of four.

[7] Karpov improved so quickly under Botvinnik's tutelage that he became the youngest Soviet master in history at the age of fifteen in 1966; this tied the record established by Boris Spassky in 1952.

[10][11] Karpov won a gold medal for academic excellence in high school, and entered Moscow State University in 1968 to study mathematics.

[12] In 1969, Karpov became the first Soviet player since Spassky (1955) to win the World Junior Championship, scoring an undefeated 10/11 in the final A group at Stockholm.

[17] Karpov won the 1971 Alekhine Memorial tournament in Moscow (jointly with Leonid Stein), ahead of a star-studded field, for his first significant adult victory.

[18] His Elo rating shot from 2540 in 1971 to 2660 in 1973,[19] during which he shared second place in the 1973 Soviet championship, one point behind Spassky,[20] and qualified for the Leningrad Interzonal.

Karpov defeated Lev Polugaevsky by the score of +3=5 in the first Candidates' match, earning the right to face former champion Boris Spassky in the semifinal round.

Spassky won the first game as Black in good style, but tenacious, aggressive play from Karpov secured him overall victory by +4−1=6.

Following ten consecutive draws, Korchnoi threw away a winning position in the seventeenth game to give Karpov a 3–0 lead.

Fischer not only insisted that the match be the first to ten wins (draws not counting), but also that the champion retain the crown if the score was tied 9–9.

FIDE, the International Chess Federation, refused to allow this proviso, and gave both players a deadline of April 1, 1975, to agree to play the match under the FIDE-approved rules.

Garry Kasparov argued that Karpov would have had good chances because he had beaten Spassky convincingly and was a new breed of tough professional, and indeed had higher quality games, while Fischer had been inactive for three years.

[31] In 1978, Karpov's first title defence was against Viktor Korchnoi, the opponent he had defeated in the 1973–75 Candidates' cycle; the match was played at Baguio, Philippines, with the winner needing six victories.

[32] Three years later, Korchnoi reemerged as the Candidates' winner against German finalist Robert Hübner to challenge Karpov in Merano, Italy.

After Kasparov won games 47 and 48, FIDE President Florencio Campomanes unilaterally terminated the match, citing the players' health.

He fought Kasparov in three more world championship matches in 1986 (held in London and Leningrad), 1987 (in Seville), and 1990 (in New York City and Lyon).

After a further mistake in the second session, Karpov was slowly ground down and resigned on move 64, ending the match and allowing Kasparov to keep the title.

The field, in eventual finishing order, was Karpov, Kasparov, Shirov, Bareev, Kramnik, Lautier, Anand, Kamsky, Topalov, Ivanchuk, Gelfand, Illescas, Judit Polgár, and Beliavsky; with an average Elo rating of 2685, the highest ever at that time.

In the first of these events, the FIDE World Chess Championship 1998, champion Karpov was seeded straight into the final, defeating Viswanathan Anand (+2−2=2, rapid tiebreak 2–0).

It consisted of four rapid (or semi-rapid) and eight blitz games and took place exactly 25 years after the two players' legendary encounter at the World Chess Championship 1984.

Karpov played a match against Yasser Seirawan in 2012 in St. Louis, Missouri, an important center of the North American chess scene, winning 8–6 (+5−3=6).

[45] On March 2, 2022, the school announced a name change to International Chess Institute of the Midwest due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

[49] Karpov expressed support of the unilateral annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, and accused Europe of trying to demonize Putin.

[50] In August 2019, Maxim Dlugy said that Karpov had been waiting since March for the approval of a non-immigrant visa to the United States, despite frequently visiting the country since 1972.

Karpov's playing style, described as a "boa constrictor",[61][62] is solidly positional, taking minimal risks but reacting mercilessly to the slightest error by his opponent.

[63] Karpov himself describes his style as follows:Let us say the game may be continued in two ways: one of them is a beautiful tactical blow that gives rise to variations that don't yield to precise calculations; the other is clear positional pressure that leads to an endgame with microscopic chances of victory....

If the opponent offers keen play I don't object; but in such cases I get less satisfaction, even if I win, than from a game conducted according to all the rules of strategy with its ruthless logic.