Articles

A chess legend called Kasparov

mida
| 7 | Chess Players

He has been one of the greatest chess players ever, now he is a politician and a very brilliant speaker. Former chess world champion Garry Kasparov was in Milan, Italy, on June 30 and July 1: he spoke about "Absolute" and "Competitions", about chess and politics (related to chess or not). He was in a very good mood and even told a joke (!) about the theory of relativity: "Do you think three hairs on your head are a lot? No, that's natural, but in your soup?". When asked about his best chess games ever, he answered: "The one I won against Karpov in November 1985 to take the world title is the most important, then I played my most beautiful combination against Topalov in Wijk aan Zee 1999". Kasparov in Milan on June 30
Garry was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, on April 13, 1963. He became the youngest ever World Chess Champion in 1985 at the age of 22 (by beating Karpov, as written above), a record broken only a few years ago by Ukrainian Ruslan Ponomariov. He held the official Fide world title until 1993. In 1993, a dispute with Fide led Kasparov to set up a rival organisation, the Professional Chess Association. He continued to hold the "Classical" World Chess Championship until his defeat by Vladimir Kramnik in 2000. Kasparov's ratings achievements include being rated world #1 continuously from 1986 until 2006; and holding the all time highest rating of 2851.
Garry announced his retirement from professional chess on March 10, 2005 (he played - and lost - his last game against Topalov), choosing instead to devote his time to politics and writing ("My great predecessors" series and "How life imitates chess" are his most recent books). He formed the United Civil Front, and joined as a member of The Other Russia, a coalition opposing the elected government of Vladimir Putin.
I annotate here his "most important game" against Karpov.

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