Garry Kasparov

Kasparov was born Garri Weinstein on April 13, 1963, in Baku, Azerbaijan, to a Jewish father and an Armenian mother; he later took the name Garri Kimovich Kasparov.⁠[1]

He became the under-18 chess champion of the USSR at 12 and the world under-20 champion at 17.⁠[2]

He became an international grandmaster in 1980.⁠[1]

His first world championship match against champion Anatoly Karpov was aborted on February 8, 1985, with Karpov leading 5–3.⁠[3]

The rematch began on June 3, 1985, over 24 games, with a drawn match enough for the defending champion; on November 9 Kasparov won the 24th and final game to take the title.⁠[3]

He was 22, the youngest world chess champion in history.⁠[4]

In 1990 he broke Bobby Fischer’s rating record, and his peak rating record stood until 2013; that year, as the USSR was collapsing, he escaped ethnic violence in Baku.⁠[2]

From February 10 to 17, 1996, he played a six-game match against IBM’s Deep Blue at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, losing the first game but winning the match 4–2.⁠[5]

On May 11, 1997, Deep Blue beat him 3½–2½ in a six-game rematch held in New York City.⁠[6][7]

Afterwards he said: “I have to pay tribute, the computer is far stronger than anybody expected.”⁠[7]

From October 8 to November 4, 2000, he played a best-of-16 match against Vladimir Kramnik in London and lost without a win, two losses and 13 draws, ending a reign of about 15 years; Kramnik’s “Berlin wall” defence became far more popular after the match.⁠[8]

On March 10, 2005, at a news conference in Linares, Spain, he announced his retirement from top-level professional play, pointing to the split of the chess world into two rival bodies since 1993 and a failed effort to reunify the title; he said he would become active in Russian politics and called President Vladimir Putin a “dictator.”⁠[9]

That year he founded the United Civil Front to oppose Vladimir Putin.⁠[1]

In April 2007 he, then leader of the opposition coalition The Other Russia, was detained with hundreds of others before a Moscow demonstration against Putin’s policies; held at a police station for five hours, he was fined by a court for joining an unsanctioned protest. On October 3, 2013, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the arrests of him and eight other plaintiffs were disproportionate to the aim of maintaining public order and ordered Russia to pay 10,000 euros in damages.⁠[10]

On December 12, 2007, The Other Russia’s conference to nominate him for president was canceled after no venue could be found in Moscow, causing him to miss a registration deadline; the coalition blamed the Central Election Commission and “administrative pressure.” An election official denied that authorities had pressured venues.⁠[11]

In 2012 he succeeded Václav Havel as chairman of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation.⁠[12]

In 2013 he moved from Moscow to New York City, saying he faced the risk of arrest amid the Putin government’s crackdown.⁠[4]

In March 2014 Croatia’s government announced that he had been granted a Croatian passport the previous week; Croatian officials praised his support for the country’s independence in the 1990s.⁠[13]

In 2015 he published Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped, which divides Putin’s rule into phases and criticizes the West’s timid reaction to Putin’s invasion of Georgia.⁠[14]

In 2016 he became a Security Ambassador for Avast Software and joined the executive advisory board of the Foundation for Responsible Robotics; he is also a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Martin School, focusing on human-machine collaboration.⁠[12]

In 2017 he published Deep Thinking, on his Deep Blue matches and on human–machine competition and collaboration; that year he founded the Renew Democracy Initiative.⁠[4]

On October 27, 2019, he appeared as the guest of episode 46 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, discussing the psychology of winning and losing, Magnus Carlsen, IBM Deep Blue, morality, autonomous vehicles, the fall of the Soviet Union and Putin.⁠[15]

On May 20, 2022, Russia’s Justice Ministry added him to its list of “foreign agents” on grounds of “political activity,” naming Ukraine and the US-based Human Rights Foundation as foreign sources.⁠[16]

On March 6, 2024, Russia’s financial watchdog Rosfinmonitoring added him to its database of “terrorists and extremists” without giving a reason; those listed can have their bank accounts seized. Rights groups say such labels are a tool the Kremlin uses to silence critics.⁠[17]

His name carries an asterisk indicating that a criminal case on terrorism charges has been opened against him; the Anti-War Committee of Russia, which he co-founded, had been declared an “undesirable organisation.”⁠[18]

With his wife, Daria, he promotes chess in education through the Kasparov Chess Foundation.⁠[2]

Personal website: Public link: https://www.kasparov.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[2]