Playing With the Greats

Chess is one of the few intellectual pursuits that can be fairly compared to major sports like basketball, soccer, football, and boxing – in fact, especially boxing. In boxing, you have two individuals enter the ring with considerable hype built up before hand, at which point all bets are off – each individual is left only with their skill and the training they have acquired up to that moment, and it must be tested against each other. For a brief time, the two boxers are the center of the universe. This is not unlike chess.

Of course, in chess you don’t have to struggle with hitting the right weight class or exercise obsessively or get your brain pummeled in and out of the ring. Instead, you spend considerable time learning the game, learning the strategies, learning your opponent’s proclivities, and focusing your attention and concentration inwards. You sharpen your skills and knowledge and then apply them to the game at hand. The greatest chess players, much as in boxing, are the ones who accomplish all of this again and again. A win here and there is fine; winning consistently is what it takes to be the best.

















Kasparov and Karpov 

When we talk about the best in chess, we are talking about Garry Kasparov. Born in 1963, he retired in 2005, and no other chess player in the history of the game has dominated the game for as long or as successfully as Kasparov. At the age of 22, he was the youngest undisputed World Champion ever in 1985, a distinction he held until 1993 when a dispute with FIDE led him to technically lose the World Title. He did not experience another loss until 2000, against Kramnik.

Kasparov began his career in chess by training at Mikhail Botvinnik’s chess school at the age of 10, and in 1979, he entered a professional tournament (accidentally, no less!) and won. While he managed to challenge Karpov for the World Championship in 1984, after a 48 game match, he lost. The following year, of course, he succeeded in winning the world championship, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Up until Kasparov’s domination of chess, however, it was Anatoly Karpov who was considered the great chess player of his time. Born in 1951, Karpov was World Champion from 1975 until 1985 (when he was, as mentioned, finally defeated by Kasparov). With over 160 first place tournament finishes under his belt, Karpov is certainly one of the greatest chess grandmasters in history.

Beyond Russia

Turning from Russia, we come to Bobby Fischer, one of the greatest chess masters of all time and one who often faced his greatest enemy in himself. A prodigy who won eight US championships beginning at the age of 14, Fischer was the youngest Grandmaster at the age of 15 and the youngest ever candidate for the World Championship. By the time the 1970s rolled around, he dominated in the chess world, winning 20 consecutive matches at the 1970 Interzonal and, by 1972, winning the World Championship from Boris Spassky. By 1975, however, he had retired from professional chess due to a conflict with FIDE, the International Chess Federation.

Fischer later ran into a variety of political troubles, with his passport revoked, being held in Japan for several months, and finally being allowed to live – and a few years later, die – in Iceland. Were it not for his many conflicts with FIDE and problems with playing conditions and money received for playing, he might well have been the number one ranked chess player in the world. Sadly, we will never get the chance to know, as he passed away in 2008.

The Spirit of the Game

 

Chess is definitely a game that has had its share of big personalities, from Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov to Mikhail Botvinnik and Jose Capablanca. Of course, the future of chess has been thrown into question with the development of Deep Blue, the computer that managed to defeat World Champion Kasparov. Playing chess has never been about being the best possible player, however; it is about matching wits with another human being. That a computer can do something is all well and good, but nothing can replace the spirit of intellectual competition that chess continues to embody.