Garry Kasparov: life, best games and the Deep Blue match

Garry Kasparov (Baku, 1963) was the thirteenth world chess champion and, for many, the greatest player in history. He took the title from Anatoly Karpov in 1985, aged 22, held it for fifteen years, was world number one for 255 months and reached a rating of 2851, a record that stood for fourteen years. Away from the board, his name is tied for ever to Deep Blue, the IBM computer that beat him in a match in 1997.

Who Garry Kasparov is

He was born on 13 April 1963 in Baku, then part of the Soviet Union, as Garik Weinstein; as a teenager he took a Russified form of his mother's surname, Kasparyan. He came up through the Soviet school, which in those years produced champions like no other, and studied at the chess school of the former world champion Mikhail Botvinnik.

His rise was extremely fast. By the early 1980s he was among the best in the world, and from 1984 until his retirement he sat at the top of the FIDE list for 255 months, almost three times as long as Karpov, the next on that count. In July 1999 he reached 2851, the highest rating in history until Magnus Carlsen passed it in 2013. If you want to know what a figure like that means, the guide to how Elo is calculated explains it with numbers.

Kasparov vs Karpov: five world title matches

No rivalry in chess lasted as long. Kasparov and Karpov played five world championship matches between 1984 and 1990, and Karpov did not win any of them.

The match that never finished (1984–85)

The first was played to six wins, with draws not counting. Karpov started like a train and went 4–0 up; then came an endless run of draws. When Kasparov began to pull games back, FIDE President Florencio Campomanes stopped the match on 15 February 1985, after 48 games, with Karpov leading by five wins to three. He cited the players' exhaustion, and it remains one of the most disputed decisions in chess history.

The title at 22 (1985)

The match was replayed that same year in Moscow, over 24 games. Kasparov won 13–11 and on 9 November 1985, by winning the final game with Black —a Sicilian—, he became the youngest world champion in history up to that point, at 22. That broke the record of Mikhail Tal, who had been champion at 23.

Three title defences

Karpov had a right to a rematch and used it three times:

• 1986, in London and Leningrad: Kasparov won 12.5–11.5, after losing three games in a row in the second half.
• 1987, in Seville: 12–12. Kasparov came to the last game a point down, won it and kept the title on the tie.
• 1990, in New York and Lyon: 12.5–11.5 again.

That is 144 games between the two of them in world title matches alone. What those duels teach best is the contrast of styles: Karpov, the master of prophylaxis and small advantages; Kasparov, the master of initiative and calculation.

The split from FIDE and the end of the reign

In 1993 Kasparov and his challenger, England's Nigel Short, broke away from FIDE and played their match in London under a new body, the PCA. Kasparov won it, and from then on there were two world champions for thirteen years: FIDE's and the "classical" one, the line that went through Kasparov. In 1995 he defended that title against Viswanathan Anand in New York, by 10.5–7.5.

He lost it in 2000, in London, to Vladimir Kramnik: 8.5–6.5, with two Kramnik wins and thirteen draws. The key was an opening. Kramnik met the Ruy Lopez with the Berlin Defence, which often leads to a queenless endgame that is very hard to break down, and Kasparov did not win a single game in the whole match. The Ruy Lopez guide explains how that "Berlin Wall" is played.

He stayed world number one and kept winning tournaments until, on 10 March 2005, after the Linares tournament, he announced his retirement from professional chess.

Kasparov's Immortal: against Topalov, Wijk aan Zee 1999

If you have to pick one game, it is this one. In round four of the Wijk aan Zee tournament in January 1999, Kasparov had White against Veselin Topalov, who replied with a Pirc. Both sides castled queenside and the position became tense, with the black king on a7 and a black pawn on d4 in the way. Then Kasparov gave up a rook:

Topalov took it with 24...cxd4 and one of the most famous king hunts in history began: 25.Re7+ Kb6 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. The black king ended up on d1, on White's back rank, and Topalov resigned on move 44.

Over the years, engine analysis showed that Black could have defended better —with 24...Kb6 instead of taking the rook— and that the sacrifice was not forced. That takes nothing away from what it teaches: to play 24.Rxd4 you had to see, at the board and with the clock running, a sequence of more than ten moves with the enemy king walking into the open. If you want to train that kind of calculation, the guide on how to calculate in chess sets out the method.

Kasparov vs Deep Blue

In February 1996, in Philadelphia, Kasparov played a six-game match against Deep Blue, an IBM computer built to play chess. He lost the first game —the first time a machine had beaten a reigning world champion in a game at classical time controls— but recovered and won the match 4–2.

The rematch was played in May 1997 in New York, against an upgraded version. They reached the sixth game level at 2.5–2.5. With Black, Kasparov chose a Caro-Kann Defence and walked into a knight sacrifice on e6 that was known to theory:

He resigned on move 19. Deep Blue won the match 3.5–2.5, the first time a computer had beaten a world champion in a match. Kasparov suspected human help and asked for a third match that was never played; IBM retired the machine. Seen from today, when any phone plays better than any human, that match marks the moment chess began to live alongside engines, for analysis and for preparation.

Kasparov's style

If Bobby Fischer is the model of clarity and Tal the model of chaos, Kasparov is the model of energy. His games give a feeling of permanent attack, but there is an enormous amount of work behind them.

• Initiative above all. He preferred to give up material for active pieces rather than defend a passive position a pawn up.
• Opening preparation. He was one of the first to bring deep home preparation to the elite, with a team of analysts and, from the 1990s, with databases and computers. He arrived at the board with novelties prepared deep into theory.
• A fighting repertoire. With Black, the Sicilian Najdorf against 1.e4, and the King's Indian and the Grünfeld against 1.d4: openings where Black fights for the initiative from the start.
• Dynamism over structure. He would accept weak pawns or an exposed king if his pieces were doing more work than his opponent's.

After retirement

After 2005 he turned mainly to politics, as an opponent of Vladimir Putin's government, and to writing. His series My Great Predecessors goes through the earlier world champions game by game and is one of the most complete works of chess history in existence. He also set up a foundation to promote chess teaching in schools, and has occasionally come back to play in exhibition events at faster time controls.

How to study Kasparov

His games are not the easiest for a club player: the calculation is dense and the positions are full of tension. What helps most is to take them one at a time, with a board in front of you, and at every critical moment ask yourself what Kasparov wanted to do before looking at the move. The immortal against Topalov is a good place to start: the sacrifice makes sense and the king hunt is a calculation exercise in itself. If a decision doesn't add up for you, at Ask the GM you can ask about that exact move.

At AcademiaTal, Tactical masters: from Morphy to Shirov devotes a tribute to Kasparov alongside Morphy, Steinitz, Tal, Fischer and Shirov. For his main weapon with Black there is Sicilian Najdorf in Depth: Six Main Systems, and for another of his favourite defences against 1.d4, The Grünfeld Defense: Ideas, Lines and Current Games. All of them are included in the subscriptions.