Archives

Garry Kimovich Kasparov (born Garik Kimovich Weinstein, 13 April 1963) is a Russian chess Grandmaster, former World Chess Champion, writer, and political activist, considered by many to be the greatest chess player of all time. From 1986 until his retirement in 2005, Kasparov was ranked world No. 1 for 225 out of 228 months. His peak rating of 2851, achieved in 1999, was the highest recorded until being surpassed by Magnus Carlsen in 2013. Kasparov also holds records for consecutive professional tournament victories (15) and Chess Oscars (11).

Garry Kasparov on the most likely next challenger to Magnus Carlsen

Garry Kasparov joined the podcast host Tyler Cowen for the latter’s program/podcast called Conversations with Tyler. In that episode, Kasparov discussed his views and opinions about AI (Artificial Intelligence), chess, and the future of creativity.

Towards the end of the interview, Cowen asked Kasparov who he thinks will be the most likely next challenger to the World Champion, Magnus Carlsen.

Kasparov ranked them in the following order:

  1. Wesley So
  2. Fabiano Caruana
  3. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave

Excerpt of that follows:

World Champions Ranked by CAPS

Chess.com has recently developed a tool that evaluates the strength of play for any chess player, or the quality of moves of any chess game. They call it the Computer Aggregated Precision Score (or CAPS).

Essentially, what CAPS does is evaluate a player’s game (or set of games) and assess its moves for its accuracy against what the computers think are the best moves in each given position.

Now, since world champions of different eras have no way to prove their worth against each other, CAPS is a good way to evaluate and compare the quality of their games, and thus will give us a “rough estimate” of how well world champions will fare against each other should they face over the chessboard.

Indeed, Chess.com did just that.

Now, let’s find out how your favorite world champion fared using the CAPS system below:

CAPS World Champions

CAPS World Champions

What do you think? Do you agree with the CAPS system? Put your comments below.

Computer Style of Playing Chess

Photo: Adam Nadel/Associated Press

Photo: Adam Nadel/Associated Press

This NPR article entitled, “20 Years Later, Humans Still No Match For Computers On The Chessboard“, describes best the playing style of computers vs. humans:

“And in those borderline cases when it’s not obvious that you have to retreat, chess players tend to not like to retreat,” Polgar says. “Let’s say you move a knight forward towards your opponent’s king, attacking. Unless you absolutely have to retreat, you rather try to follow up that attack by bringing more pieces to attack your opponent’s king.”

Computers display no such stubbornness. “A computer, if it calculates that the best move is to retreat, it has absolutely no psychological boundaries holding it back from retreating,” Polgar says.

Sinquefield Cup 2016 Awarding Ceremony Pictures

Check out the pictures taken during the Sinquefield Cup 2016 awarding (closing) ceremony:

Photos credit: Lennart Ootes: Website | Twitter

Retirement Age for Chess

Viswanathan Anand about people who are repeatedly asking him about his retirement plans:

Honestly, I understand why they are asking that question. It doesn’t offend me. I just live for the moment. One day it will be ‘yes.’ For the moment it is ‘no.’

Unlike a lot of other sports, there is virtually no retiring from chess. You can definitely ‘lie low’, as I believe Garry Kasparov did, but not retirement.

But what are the signs that one should start lying low from chess? When they get to a certain age? When they are already off their peak form by so much? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Photo credit: Grand Chess Tour.

The Greatest World Championship Rivalry

Perhaps in time for the 2016 World Championship, Dr. Timothy Harding narrates the series of events that went down to become the greatest world championship rivarly in the history of chess:

In their epic World Championship rivalry over the course of five matches and six years, Kasparov achieved a superiority of just two wins over Karpov (21 to 19) with 104 games ending in draws.

The series of games included a few “grandmaster draws” and some blunders, but overall the contests were of very high quality. They represented the highest achievements of the human mind in chess at a time when it was unaided by computers.

A long but exciting read. A trip down memory lane. It makes one wonder, how would the current landscape be so different if computers were not involved in molding the grandamsters of today? Do you think we’ll see the same set of people at the top level chess, or only the ones backed by heavy machineries like the Russians?

Viktor Korchnoi dies at the age of 85

Chess.com news:

In a bad year for sports legends, the chess world is not staying behind. Today Viktor Korchnoi died at the age of 85 in a hospital in Wohlen, Switzerland. Korchnoi had been ill for some time and was hospitalized last week after suffering from internal bleeding

Viktor Korchnoi was considered by many as one of the most underrated players in the world of chess. He was mentioned as such by Magnus Carlsen in his interview. 

Who will win if Bobby played Karpov in 1975?

Susan Polgar:

I spoke to Boris Spassky about this same issue and he believes that Bobby would have won in 1975, but that Anatoly would have won the rematch.

However, Garry Kasparov has a different viewpoint. He believes that Anatoly would have won in 1975 and supports this opinion by demonstrating the quality of their games at that time. This is what that makes chess so interesting. From all of the people I spoke to, the opinions split right down the middle with a small edge for Bobby.

I think it would have been very close. However, Bobby would have had a small edge due to his greater experience at that time.

Just one of those ‘what-if’ questions that will obviously solicit differing opinions from different people. Apparently, we can’t hold on to the past anymore. Thus, the more relevant question now is: Who will win this year’s world championship?

Wesley So vs. Garry Kasparov Round 10 Video Coverage

Watch how the Round 10 unfolded between Wesley So and Garry Kasparov of the US Ultimate Blitz Challenge 2016. After Wesley So smothered him in this blitz game, perhaps out of frustration or embarrassment (who knows?) — Garry Kasparov walked out immediately of the playing hall. Check out also how the commentators described how astonishing Wesley was playing in this game.