Garry Kasparov, the greatest chess player of all-time, has retired from professional chess.
Kasparov has been the undisputed king of chess for the last 20 years: Highest ELO rating, World Champion, Most consecutive tournament wins (15), among others.
No one played the game like Garry. He was a great ambassador for the sport of the chess and will be sorely missed.
What really sucks about this is if it wasn’t for the scandalous behavior of FIDE over the last several years, he probably wouldn’t be retiring.
And I was so looking forward to seeing another Kasparov-Anand World Championship Match!
Yeah, it’s too bad, since it seems to me that he probably still has some great games in him; he played . He’s right when he says that’s there’s nothing left for him to accomplish. The only thing left would be regaining the world championship, and it doesn’t look like he’s going to have a shot at that anytime soon.
One thing that’s interesting is that (if this is calculated right) his rating as of today is 2812; the higest rating anyone else has ever had is Kramnik, at 2811 :).
That’s too bad. Did anyone catch the documentary on the whole Kasparov vs. Deep Blue scandal? I can’t remember what it’s called… it just came out this year.
Hmm, my sources say Kramnik’s highest rating was 2809. Kasparov’s highest rating was 2851.
In any event, Kasparov goes out on top by winning his last tournament (Super GM Linares 2005). Interestingly, he lost his last game and still won the tournament!
He played that screwed up game with the French defense against Radjabov a couple years back. Last year he missed the attack out of the Ruy Lopez (also Linares? against Vallejo-Pons maybe?). While still super-strong, he used to make something out of nothing and now he can make a little of nothing out of something.
In that ESPN2 game against Deep Junior (?), I think the draw offer out of the Sicilian after the exchange sac was the most disgusting, damaging, cowardly chess move in history.
I think it’s been terrible for chess the way the world championship has kind of been split. They need to rememdy that.
The KK matches certainly got a lot of people interested in chess, but how much really? Can’t say. I’m playing a French guy online right now who told me he got into Chess during the 1990 KK match. He feels like he’s lost his father figure. I don’t think mainstream Americans feel that deeply towards him.
Here’s part of an interview Garry gave to the Guardian:
"So why, at 41, has he decided to retire? “I made a conscious decision well before the tournament,” he says. “These kind of decisions you don’t make overnight. It takes time before you decide to quit one of the most successful careers in the history of any sport. I grew up with chess, built up my character with chess, won everything at the chessboard, gained recognition as the best chess player. So for me every aspect of life was related to chess. In your early 40s in chess you don’t feel like retiring, especially if you are still the No1-rated player in the world. But I had to find a new target. My nature is that I have to excite myself with a big challenge.”
Yes indeed, glee. Kasparov is going to do everything in his power to bring down Putin. Good for him!
He is also going to continue working on his great work My Great Predecessors and book called How Life Imitates Chess, which deals with how the game of chess can explain the decision-making process in many walks of life. Kasparov is a fantastic writer. I eagerly await their arrivals.
Kasparov wrote about his retirement in The Wall Street Journal on 3/14, which can be found here. Very interesting.
I wish him the best in all he does in the future. He is a brilliant man.
When I think of Kasparov, I will always remember one game: Karpov-Kasparov, Game 16, World Championship Match, 1985. In my mind, the best game of all time. JavaScript replay here.
glee, I would be very interested to hear your comments regarding this game.
