My Favorite Game Of. Number 16. Gary Kasparov.

A long time ago - back in the 1970's - I was a teenager. I had hair, and girls liked me! No kidding, there really was such a time.

My family had no money - if I wanted anything I had to go to work to earn the money to pay for it myself. I would be up at silly o'clock to deliver newspapers before school, and in the evenings, and at the weekend, I would go out and clean windows in the Summer, and work the 'shows' in the Winter. 

Well,  the newspaper job had a big plus side! On Saturday and Sunday mornings I would get up extra early. That would buy me 45 minutes to park myself on the stairs of whichever block of flats was the least smelly that day and read all of the newspaper chess columns. 

Barry Wood, Harry Golombek, Peter Gibbs - a lovely man who was very kind to me, Bernard Cafferty - also a lovely man -  and, above all, Leonard Barden, would tell me what was going on in the chess world. I would go over the games 'blindfold', or, if they were too complex to keep track of, copy them into a little notebook that had found it's way into my coat pocket at the paper shop in some inexplicable way!

Some of those columns are still tucked away in my, now ailing, memory. Above all, I remember one by the great Leonard Barden, where he talked about a young man in the USSR called Garik Wainstein, and predicted that he would become the World Champion. 

Not long afterwards, the name Wainstein vanished without trace from the Soviet chess magazines, and became Kasparov - it took a while before I found out that they were one and the same. 

When Shachmatny Byulettin and, I think, 64, came through the door, I would go straight to the games index and find the letter 'K'. There - apart from Karpov, who I considered very dull indeed ( the older I get, the more I appreciate what a great player he was) -  I would find games by Viktor Kupreichik - if you haven't seen his games there is a small post of mine here  and Kasparov.

It was exciting!! The magazine would be ripped from the paper wrapping, you would look at the index, and go looking for games that you knew would be magical. 

Although he was Soviet Junior ( u-18 at the age of 13!) champion by then, 1977 wasn't the greatest year for the young Kasparov, who failed in the World Cadet Championships, if I remember rightly. But the development of young players is always a series of rapid advances, with a leveling out period - a thing that I didn't really understand at the time. 

I began to think that perhaps he wouldn't make it to be one of the greats, and felt rather sad! You just expect these guys to smash everybody, all the time!! Then I came across a game that has stayed in my head ever since and I knew that Mr Barden was right.

Kasparov in 1977 - via Douglass Griffin, on twitter.

When, a couple of years later, I saw the game against Csom, I became fully convinced.

In the book 'Gary Kasparov. My Games.' there is a line from Botvinnik. '...even then he intended to become an Alekhine.' The game - not included in that book, by the way - struck me as pure Alekhine. and it had been played by a boy of just 14 years of age. The same depth of opening preparation. the same double edged fighting for the initiative - even with Black. The same balancing of positional considerations and chess dynamics. etc. etc. 

When I saw this game I believed that not only would Kasparov become World Champion, but that he would go on to become the greatest player who had ever lived.

O.K. So enjoy the game - notes are my own, except those indicated - from the book 'Garry Kasparov's Fighting Chess'.

Feel free to add your own favorite Kasparov game ( there are quite a few to choose from!),  or name it and I will add it, in the comments.

Happy 2019 everyone. May the new year be kind to you.