When did a boy become the Beast from Baku?
Garry Kasparov was born April 13, 1963 in Baku, Azerbaijan, USSR. He began to play chess at the age of six. In 1976, he won the Soviet Junior Championship. In 1980, he won the World Junior Championship. He became a grandmaster in 1980. In 1982, he won the Moscow Interzonal to begin his march through the candidates matches to meet Anatoly Karpov for the world title which he won in 1985. He was the FIDE World Champion until 1993, when he split with FIDE. He was considered by many then, and probably more now, to be the classical or linear champion until he lost a match to Vladimir Kramnik in 2000. Kasparov was the world’s number one in rating for almost the entire period of 1986-2005. The nickname Kasparov earned was “the Beast from (of) Baku.” I was wondering when Kasparov became this “beast.” In examining his early games, I found the following crush of Mark Taimanov.
Mark Taimanov was born February 7, 1926 in Kharkiv. In 1952, he became a grandmaster and was one of the best players in the Soviet Union, where he won the national championship in 1956, and in the world for decades.
The game between Kasparov and Taimanov is in one of my Kasparov databases, which only has the location, Moscow, without the name of the event. Since the game is not in other databases that I have from Chessbase and Chess Assistant, I think it may not have been played in a tournament. In any case, it seems to be a clue about the development of the boy into a beast. Kasparov grabbed a pawn on b7, which I found done in only one other game. My first impression of the game was to be impressed with his attack and the apparent ease of his victory. Then I studied it more deeply and found alternatives for Black. The game as played was not as simple as it first appeared to me, but the possible improvements were also not as simple as they first seemed. I have presented the game with much of what I discovered about it.