KASPAROV, GARY

born April 13, 1963, Baku, Azerbaijan, U.S.S.R. in full Garri Kimovich Kasparov, original name Garri Weinstein, or Harry Weinstein Russian chess master who became the world chess champion in 1985. Born to a Jewish father and an Armenian mother, Kasparov began playing chess at age six. By age 13 he was the Soviet youth champion, and he won his first international tournament at age 16 in 1979. He became an international grandmaster in 1980. From 1973 to 1978 he studied under former world champion Mikhail Botvinnik, and after that his trainer was Aleksandr Nikitin. Kasparov first challenged the reigning world champion Anatoly Karpov in a 198485 match, after he successfully survived the Fdration Internationale des checs (FIDE) series of elimination matches. Kasparov lost four out of the first nine games but then adopted a careful defensive stance, taking an extraordinarily long series of drawn games with the champion. With Kasparov finally having won three games from the exhausted Karpov, FIDE halted the series after 48 games, a decision protested by Kasparov. In the two players' rematch in 1985, Kasparov narrowly defeated Karpov in a 24-game series, thus becoming the youngest champion in the history of the game. In 1993 Kasparov and the English grandmaster Nigel Short left FIDE, the official world chess organization, and formed a rival organization, the Professional Chess Association (PCA). In response, FIDE stripped the title of world champion from Kasparov, who defeated Short that same year to become the PCA world champion. In 1996 Kasparov defeated a powerful IBM custom-built chess computer known as Deep Blue in a match that attracted worldwide attention. Kasparov and the team of Deep Blue programmers agreed to have a rematch in 1997. Deep Blue's intelligence was upgraded, and the machine prevailed. Kasparov resigned in the last game of the six-game match after 19 moves, granting the win to Deep Blue.