Garry Kasparov - The 13th World Chess Champion

Garry Kasparov is the 13th and youngest official world chess champion, political activist and writer. He wrote a lot of chess books like, “My Great Predecessors I-V”, How life imitate chess, Kasparov Against the World: The Story of the Greatest Online Challenge etc.

He was born on April 13, 1963 at Baku Azerbaijan. He learned chess at the age of 5 with his father. At the age of 7, he enrolled in Young Pioneer Palace, and at age of 10, he enrolled in Mikhail Botvinnik School of Chess under Coach Vladimir Makogonov.

In 1976-77 he won twice the USSR Junior Chess Championship.

In 1978, he was invited and won the “Sokolsky Memorial Tournament, and the achievement was the turning point of his chess career, as he quoted “I will remember the Sokolsky Memorial as long as I live".

In 1980, he won the World Junior Chess Champion and got the Grandmaster title. He played his first Olympiad with gold in team and bronze in 2nd reserve. Overall, he played 8 Olympiads from 1980-2002 with 8 gold team medals, 3 gold board medals, 4 performance medals, 2 silver and 2 bronze medals. In 198, he won the USSR Chess Championship.

In 1982, at the age of 18, he won his first super high class tournament in Bogujno, he also won the Moscow Interzonal 1982, gaining slot for Candidates Tournament where he defeated Viktor Kortschnoj and Vassily Smyslov and had the right to challenge Anatoly Karpov in a world title. He also ranked no.1 starting January 1984.

In 1984-85, Kasparov faced perhaps the most famous challenge of his career when he played against Anatoly Karpov in a match that would become one of the most iconic and controversial in chess history. The match lasted for five months and consisted of 48 games, with neither player able to claim the victory necessary to secure the world championship title. The match was eventually halted by FIDE (the International Chess Federation) president Florencio Campomanes, who cited concerns about the players' health after such an extended and grueling contest. FIDE return to the 24-games format at the rematch in the same year, Kasparov    won the title with 5 wins 3 losses and 16 draws. Also win all the 3 rematches on 1986, 1987 and 1990. The Kasparov-Karpov world matches is considered the greatest rivalry of all time with 144 games and very steep margin (+21 -19 and =104).

Kasparov's aggressive and dynamic playing style revolutionized the game of chess, earning him a reputation as one of the greatest chess players in history. He brought a new level of creativity and innovation to the game, and his matches were often marked by intense tactical battles and brilliant strategic maneuvers. He also contributed a lot of opening ideas in Queen’s Gambit, Sicilian, Ruy Lopez, Scotch etc.

In 1985, he won against 32 computers, he won also with Deep Thought in 1989 and Fritz 2 in 1992 with +24 =4 and -9 score. 

In 1990, he took part in the creation of the Democratic Party of Russia and Choice of Russia parties in June 1993.

In 1993, there were 2 world champion matches: Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short under PCA, a well-sponsored match in London with live coverage on Channel 4. They were ejected from FIDE and Kasparov won the match with 12.5-7.5 score. Meanwhile, FIDE organized its world championship match between Anatoly Karpov and Jan Timman. The two world matched lasted until reunification on 2006. After two years (1995), he won his last title with Viswanathan Anand with 4 wins 1 lost and 13 draws.

In 1999, he achieved his highest rating of 2851 (succeeded by Carlsen with 2882), and also played the most amazing game of all time with Veselin Topalov at Wijk Ann Zee based on most publications.

In 2000, there was a unsettled match between Kasparov and Alexei Shirov, the winner of candidate match against Vladimir Kramnik since the required funds not materialized. Instead, the match was arranged for Kramnik sponsored by Braingames.com, then Kasparov lost the match with 0 wins 2 losses and 13 draws.

There were unsettled arrangements between World Champion Garry Kasparov and FIDE from 1993 till his retirement on 2005. Two of them were on Sept 2003 the match with Ruslan Ponomariov and on January 2005 the match with Rustam Kasimdzhanov.

In 2003, There was a Kasparov-Deep Junior match, a six game match with standard control with $1 million prize fund. The engine evaluated three million positions per second. After 5 games with +1 -1 =3 score, Kasparov offered a draw in game 6 with good position, and accepted with Deep Junior team. He said he feared of making a blunder. He was also a chief advisor of Everyman Chess started this year 2003.

In 2005, he retired from professional chess, focusing on politics, writing and his businesses, he was rank no.1 for 255 consecutive    months (1984 – 2005. Also, holds record with 15 consecutive tournament victories. Kasparov received many negative things from Russian secret service, including police brutality, threats and alleged harassment.

In 2007, he was ranked 25th out of 100 in the living geniuses by Synectics, an international consulting company. He also helped to organize Saint Petersburg Dissenters' March and The March of the Dissenters rallying against President Putin and Governor Valentina Matviyenko. He was held for some ten hours and then fined and released. Kasparov initially filed a presidential candidacy in Russia but later on withdrawn due to many reasons.

In 2008, he run as candidate for president race in Russia but lost to Vladimir Putin. Kasparov coached many top chess players like Magnus Carlsen in Feb 2009, Hikaru Nakamura on Jan 2011. He did many simultaneous exhibition like in Bratislava 2011 with 14-0-0, in Pula 2015 with 19-0-0, in Mönchengladbach 2016 with 15-0-0 score, etc.

In 2013, he left Russia in fear of persecution as he opposed Putin. He cited in Daily Beast article, that he was proud of his initiation of rally before the 2012 Presidential election wherein “every anti-Putin element in the country to march together regardless of ideology". Also, Kasparov filed candidacy for President in FIDE during 84th FIDE Congress in Tallinn, he lost in the election with 61-110 in favor of incumbent Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. He received an award from UN as "not only one of the world's smartest men" but "also among its bravest”.

In 2014, he got Croatian citizenship and live there. The next year he published a book entitled “Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped”, likens Putin to Hitler.

In 2017, he founded the Renew Democracy Initiative (RDI), an American political organization promoting and defending liberal democracy in the U.S. and abroad. He is also the chairman of Human Rights Foundation. He return to chess by playing in the St Louis 2017 finished 8th out of 10, Chess 9LX 2020 and 2021, Grand Chess 2021.

In 2021, He launched Kasparovchess, a subscription-based online chess community featuring documentaries, lessons, puzzles, podcasts, articles, interviews and playing zones, in 2021

There are 2676 games listed in the chessbase as of 2020.

Let’s look of his best games which feature in our GMG page.