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.
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!). Smyslov was
the seventh world champion in 1957, but later years saw
his willingness to fight for wins greatly diminished.
This posed no problems for the youngster from Baku who
registered a comfortable win.
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. It would appear that Kasparov, who had won the last two games before the suspension, felt the same way as some commentators - that he was now the favourite to win the match despite his 5-3 deficit. He appeared to be physically stronger than his opponent, and in the later games seemed to have been playing the better chess.
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.
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.
This stand-off lasted until 1993, by which time a new challenger had qualified through the Candidates cycle for Kasparov's next World Championship defence. The world champion and his challenger (Nigel Short) decided to play their match outside of FIDE's jurisdiction, under another organisation created by Garry Kasparov called the Professional Chess Association (PCA). This is where the great fracture on the lineage of World Champions happened.
Kasparov and Short were ejected from FIDE, and they played their well sponsored match in London, with Kasparov winning heavily. FIDE set up their "World Championship" with the loser of the Candidates final, Jan Timman, and previous World Champion Karpov. So Kasparov held the PCA World Chess Championship, and Karpov held the FIDE World Chess Championship.
Garry Kasparov defended his title in 1995 against the
Indian superstar Viswanathan Anand, before the PCA
collapsed (Intel, one of the major backers, pulled out).
Kasparov tried to organise another World Championship
match, under yet another organisation, the World Chess
Association (WCA) with Linares organiser Rentero. This
climaxed into a match between
Vladimir Kramnik and
Alexei Shirov, which Shirov won against all
expectations. The WCA collapsed, however, when Rentero
admitted the funds required and promised never
materialised.
This left Kasparov stranded, and yet another organisation stepped in - BrainGames.com, headed by Raymond Keene (who was also involved in bringing Kasparov to London for his replayed Candidates match against Korchnoi, half of the first Kasparov-Karpov match, and the Kasparov-Short PCA match). No match against Shirov was arranged, and talks with Anand collapsed, so a match was instead arranged against Kramnik.
This match, Kasparov-Kramnik, took place in London during the latter half of 2000. A well prepared Kramnik surprised a lacklustre Kasparov and won a crucial game 2 against Kasparov's supposedly invincible Gruenfeld Defence. So Kasparov was mortal! Kramnik emerged victorious, and for the first time in sixteen years Kasparov had no world championship title.
Garry Kasparov proved in 2001 that he was still the strongest tournament player in the world with his fine performance in the Corus Chess Tournament at Wijk aan Zee.
As part of the so-called "Prague Agreement",
masterminded by Yasser Seirawan and intended to reunite
the two World Championships, Kasparov was to play a
match against the FIDE World Champion Ruslan Ponomariov
in September 2003. However, this match was called off
after Ponomariov refused to sign his contract for it
without reservation. As of November 2003, there are
plans for Kasparov to play a match against the next FIDE
champion (to be determined at some unspecified date),
although whether these plans will come to fruition
remains to be seen. In the meantime, Kasparov continues
to play in tournaments, with very good results on the
whole.
The game Kasparov-Topalov, played at the Corus tournament in
Wijk aan Zee in 1999, features one of his best combinations:
1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 g6 4.Be3 Bg7 5.Qd2 c6 6.f3 b5 7.Nge2 Nbd7
8.Bh6 Bxh6 9.Qxh6 Bb7 10.a3 e5 11.0-0-0 Qe7 12.Kb1 a6 13.Nc1
0-0-0 14.Nb3 exd4 15.Rxd4 c5 16.Rd1 Nb6 17.g3 Kb8 18.Na5 Ba8
19.Bh3 d5 20.Qf4+ Ka7 21.Rhe1 d4 22.Nd5 Nbxd5 23.exd5 Qd6
24.Rxd4!! cxd4 25.Re7+! Kb6 [25...Qxe7 26. Qxd4+ Kb8 27. Qb6+
Bb7 28. Nc6+ Ka8 29.Qa7#] 26.Qxd4+ Kxa5 27.b4+ Ka4 28.Qc3 Qxd5
29.Ra7 Bb7 30.Rxb7 Qc4 31.Qxf6 Kxa3 32.Qxa6+ Kxb4 33.c3+! Kxc3
34.Qa1+ Kd2 35.Qb2+ Kd1 36.Bf1! Rd2 37.Rd7! Rxd7 38.Bxc4 bxc4
39.Qxh8 Rd3 40.Qa8 c3 41.Qa4+ Ke1 42.f4 f5 43.Kc1 Rd2 44.Qa7 1-0
In February
1996, IBM's computer chess program "Deep Blue" defeated Kasparov in one game using normal time controls, in Deep Blue - Kasparov, 1996, Game 1.However, Kasparov retorted with 3 wins and 2 draws, soundly winning the match. In May 1997, IBM's updated "Deep Blue" defeated Kasparov. This was the first time a computer had ever defeated a world champion. IBM keeps a web site of the event at http://www.chess.ibm.com/
In November 2003, he engaged in a four game match against chess playing computer program X3D Fritz (which was said to have an estimated rating of 2807), using a virtual board, 3D glasses and a speech recognition system. The first was a draw, X3D won the second after Kasparov blundered when short of time, Kasparov won the third, and the last game was a draw. The X3D Man-Machine World Chess Championship match ended in draw. Kasparov receives $175,000 for the result and takes home the golden trophy. (Although since it drew the match X3D Fritz said it was going to store a virtual reality copy of the trophy for itself.). Kasparov continued to criticize the blunder in the second game that cost him a crucial point. He felt that he had outplayed the machine overall and played well. "I only made one mistake but unfortunately that one mistake lost the game."
Play through Garry Kasparov's games
Garry_Kasparov vs Deep Blue 1996 Games