Garry Kimovich Kasparov – Born on April 13, 1963 in Baku, Azerbaijan, USSR
World Junior Chess Champion in 1980.
Crowned 13th World Chess Champion in 1985.
Was the #1-rated player in the world for 20 consecutive years, until his retirement from professional chess in 2005.
Winner of eight Chess Olympiads.
Winner of 11 Chess Oscars.
Played first elite match of rapid chess in 1987, which was televised live.
First to perform sessions of timed simultaneous play against entire national Olympiad teams.
Played two world-famous “Man vs. Machine” matches against the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue in 1996 and 1997, which set a record for online viewing.
First to play and win a match of computer-assisted Advanced Chess in 1998.
Won the first-ever internet mass-participation game “Kasparov vs. the World” in 1999, lasting four months with 3 million viewers and over 58,000 participants from 75 countries.
He is the author of over 20 popular chess books. Among them, “The Test of Time”, “Unlimited Challenge”, the five-volume series “My Great Predecessors”, and the autobiographical three-volume series “Garry Kasparov, My Story”.
In the past several years Kasparov has given more than 100 lectures and seminars on leadership, strategy, and innovation to hosts including Google, IBM, Facebook, General Electric and Fujitsu. His 2007 bestselling book on decision-making, “How Life Imitates Chess”, has been translated into over 20 languages.
Since 2002, Kasparov has been actively promoting the introduction of chess into education systems worldwide through the rapidly expanding network of the Kasparov Chess Foundation.
In 2007, Garry Kasparov was named to the list of 100 Living Geniuses, as compiled by the international consulting company Creators Synectics, and to the TIME 100 Most Influential list.
