Over his five matches for the World Championship against Gary Kasparov, the Closed Spanish was Kasparov's most common defence to the King's Pawn. Time and time again these two great rivals returned to the same dramatic arena armed with new weapons from their laboratories, greatly enriching the theory of these highly fashionable systems and creating a remarkable series of chess masterpieces.

The Zaitsev system, devised by Karpov's long-time second and chief analyst Igor Zaitsev, has been the main scene of these contests, and this book also covers a second system, which Karpov developed himself for the most recent match.

International Master Anatoly Bikhovsky is the former USSR Chief Junior Trainer and a leading opening theoretician. His previous book, Spanish (Ruy Lopez): Chigorin, was excellently recieved by the chess press.