Garry Kasparov

Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, Moscow, Russia

Last updated 8/27/2026

Garry Kasparov became the youngest ever undisputed World Chess Champion in 1985, at 22, defeating fellow Soviet Anatoly Karpov after an earlier, unprecedented championship match between the two had been controversially halted without a result the previous year after 48 games. Kasparov held the world's top ranking for a record 255 months, more than any other player before or since, and his rivalry with Karpov across five separate world championship matches through the 1980s and early 1990s is still considered one of the most intense and closely followed rivalries in chess history. His 1997 loss to IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer, following a win in an earlier 1996 match against an earlier version of the machine, became one of the most widely covered moments in the history of human-versus-computer competition, a symbolic marker of computers finally surpassing the best human players at the game. Kasparov's aggressive, attacking playing style and his continued influence as a chess theorist, author, and later political dissident against the Russian government have kept him one of the most publicly recognizable figures the sport has ever produced, well beyond his playing accomplishments alone.

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