Garry Kimovich Kasparov (born April 13, 1963) is a chess grandmaster and the strongest (highest rated on the FIDE January 2004 list at 2831) chess player in the world.
He was born as Garry Weinstein in Baku, but adopted his mother's maternal surname of Kasparov when he was 12. His mother is an Armenian woman whose surname is Kasparian, and "Kasparov" is the slavicized version of this name. He first began his serious study of chess after he studied a chess problem set up by his parents and proposed a solution to it.
Early career
Garry's rise up the FIDE ranking order was nothing short of phenomenal. Starting with an oversight by the Russian chess federation, Garry Kasparov participated in a Grandmaster tournament in Banja Luka whilst still an unknown (the federation thought it was a junior tournament). He emerged from this top-class encounter with a provisional rating of 2595, enough to catapault him into the top group of chess players.
The next year, 1980, he won the World Junior Chess Championship in Dortmund, Germany.
It was clear from early on that Garry had the playing strength to match the then current world champion Anatoly Karpov - a firm favourite of the Russian Chess Federation. But first Garry had to pass the test of the Candidates Tournament to qualify.
His first Candidates match was against Alexander Beliavsky, from which Kasparov emerged surprisingly victorious (Beliavsky was an exceptionally tough opponent). Politics threatened Kasparov's next match against Viktor Korchnoi which was scheduled to be played in Pasadena, California. Korchnoi defected from Russia in the late 1970s, and was at that time the strongest non-Soviet player. Various political maneuvering prevented Kasparov from playing Korchnoi.
This was resolved by Korchnoi's generous gesture of allowing the match to be replayed in London. Kasparov won.
Garry Kasparov's Candidates final match was against the resurgent Vassily Smyslov (who won his match against Hubner by the spin of a roulette wheel!). This posed no problems for the youngster from Baku who registered a comfortable win.
1984 World Championship
The 1984 World Championship match between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov had its fair share of ups and downs, as well as the most controversial finish to a competitive match ever. Karpov started off in very good form, and within a dozen games Kasparov found himself 4-0 down in a "first to six wins" match. Fellow players predicted a 6-0 whitewash of Kasparov within 18 games.
For Karpov, the result so far would go some way in exorcising the ghost of Fischer's Candidates results in 1970, and would cement Karpov as a true World Champion.
Garry Kasparov dug in, with inspiration from a Russian poet before each game, battled with Karpov into seventeen successive draws, Karpov duly won the next decisive game before Kasparov fought back with another series of draws until game 36, Kasparov's first win against the World Champion.
At this point Karpov was close to exhaustion, and not looking like the player that started this match. A few games later Kasparov won another two games to bring the scores to 5-3 in Karpov's favour. Then the match was ended without result by Campomanes - the head of FIDE, and a new match was announced to start a few months later.
The termination of the match was a matter of some controversy. At the press confrence at which he announced his decision, Campomanes cited the health of the two players, which had been put under strain by the length of the match, yet both Karpov and Kasparov stated that they would prefer the match to continue. Kasparov in particular was resentful of Campomanes' decision, asking him why he was abandoning the match if both players wanted to continue. Whatever the reasons for the abandonment, the match became the first, and so far only, world championship match to be abandoned without result. Kasparov had made a new enemy in Campomanes, and the feud between to the two would eventually come to a head in 1993 with Kasparov's complete break-away from FIDE.
World Champion
The second Karpov-Kasparov match in 1985 was organised as the best of 24 games, first player to 12.5 points would claim the title (in the event of a 12-12 draw, the title would go to Karpov as the reigning champion). Kasparov showed he had learnt some valuable lessons in the previous match, and although the score was quite even down to the final wire, a few spectacular games involving the Sicilian defence secured the World Championship for Kasparov at the tender age of 22.
Garry Kasparov cemented his authority at the top of the rating ladder with a series of fine tournament performances as well as defending his title three times against his arch-opponent Karpov.
With the World Champion title in his grasp, Kasparov switched to battling against FIDE - as Bobby Fischer had done twenty years earlier, but this time from within FIDE. He created an organisation to represent chess players, the GrandMaster's Association (GMA) to give players more of a say in FIDE's activities.
He was born as Garry Weinstein in Baku, but adopted his mother's maternal surname of Kasparov when he was 12. His mother is an Armenian woman whose surname is Kasparian, and "Kasparov" is the slavicized version of this name. He first began his serious study of chess after he studied a chess problem set up by his parents and proposed a solution to it.
Early career
Garry's rise up the FIDE ranking order was nothing short of phenomenal. Starting with an oversight by the Russian chess federation, Garry Kasparov participated in a Grandmaster tournament in Banja Luka whilst still an unknown (the federation thought it was a junior tournament). He emerged from this top-class encounter with a provisional rating of 2595, enough to catapault him into the top group of chess players.
The next year, 1980, he won the World Junior Chess Championship in Dortmund, Germany.
It was clear from early on that Garry had the playing strength to match the then current world champion Anatoly Karpov - a firm favourite of the Russian Chess Federation. But first Garry had to pass the test of the Candidates Tournament to qualify.
His first Candidates match was against Alexander Beliavsky, from which Kasparov emerged surprisingly victorious (Beliavsky was an exceptionally tough opponent). Politics threatened Kasparov's next match against Viktor Korchnoi which was scheduled to be played in Pasadena, California. Korchnoi defected from Russia in the late 1970s, and was at that time the strongest non-Soviet player. Various political maneuvering prevented Kasparov from playing Korchnoi.
This was resolved by Korchnoi's generous gesture of allowing the match to be replayed in London. Kasparov won.
Garry Kasparov's Candidates final match was against the resurgent Vassily Smyslov (who won his match against Hubner by the spin of a roulette wheel!). This posed no problems for the youngster from Baku who registered a comfortable win.
1984 World Championship
The 1984 World Championship match between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov had its fair share of ups and downs, as well as the most controversial finish to a competitive match ever. Karpov started off in very good form, and within a dozen games Kasparov found himself 4-0 down in a "first to six wins" match. Fellow players predicted a 6-0 whitewash of Kasparov within 18 games.
For Karpov, the result so far would go some way in exorcising the ghost of Fischer's Candidates results in 1970, and would cement Karpov as a true World Champion.
Garry Kasparov dug in, with inspiration from a Russian poet before each game, battled with Karpov into seventeen successive draws, Karpov duly won the next decisive game before Kasparov fought back with another series of draws until game 36, Kasparov's first win against the World Champion.
At this point Karpov was close to exhaustion, and not looking like the player that started this match. A few games later Kasparov won another two games to bring the scores to 5-3 in Karpov's favour. Then the match was ended without result by Campomanes - the head of FIDE, and a new match was announced to start a few months later.
The termination of the match was a matter of some controversy. At the press confrence at which he announced his decision, Campomanes cited the health of the two players, which had been put under strain by the length of the match, yet both Karpov and Kasparov stated that they would prefer the match to continue. Kasparov in particular was resentful of Campomanes' decision, asking him why he was abandoning the match if both players wanted to continue. Whatever the reasons for the abandonment, the match became the first, and so far only, world championship match to be abandoned without result. Kasparov had made a new enemy in Campomanes, and the feud between to the two would eventually come to a head in 1993 with Kasparov's complete break-away from FIDE.
World Champion
The second Karpov-Kasparov match in 1985 was organised as the best of 24 games, first player to 12.5 points would claim the title (in the event of a 12-12 draw, the title would go to Karpov as the reigning champion). Kasparov showed he had learnt some valuable lessons in the previous match, and although the score was quite even down to the final wire, a few spectacular games involving the Sicilian defence secured the World Championship for Kasparov at the tender age of 22.
Garry Kasparov cemented his authority at the top of the rating ladder with a series of fine tournament performances as well as defending his title three times against his arch-opponent Karpov.
With the World Champion title in his grasp, Kasparov switched to battling against FIDE - as Bobby Fischer had done twenty years earlier, but this time from within FIDE. He created an organisation to represent chess players, the GrandMaster's Association (GMA) to give players more of a say in FIDE's activities.
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