Joined: May 2002 Posts: 16174 Location: Florida
Thanks: 3495 Thanked: 1327 times in 1046 posts
Gender: Country:
About Garry Kasparov
About Garry Kasparov
Born in Baku, Azerbaijan, in the Soviet Union in 1963, Garry Kasparov became the under-18 chess champion of the USSR at the age of 12 and the world under-20 champion at 17. He came to international fame at the age of 22 as the youngest world chess champion in history in 1985. He defended his title five times, including a legendary series of matches against arch-rival Anatoly Karpov. Kasparov broke Bobby Fischer’s rating record in 1990 and his own peak rating record remained unbroken until 2013. His famous matches against the IBM super-computer Deep Blue in 1996-97 were key to bringing artificial intelligence, and chess, into the mainstream.
Kasparov’s was one of the first prominent Soviets to call for democratic and market reforms and was an early supporter of Boris Yeltsin’s push to break up the Soviet Union. In 1990, he and his family escaped ethnic violence in his native Baku as the USSR collapsed. In 2005, Kasparov, in his 20th year as the world’s top-rated player, retired from professional chess to join the vanguard of the Russian pro-democracy movement. In 2012, Kasparov was named chairman of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation, succeeding Vaclav Havel. HRF promotes individual liberty worldwide and organizes the Oslo Freedom Forum. Facing imminent arrest during Putin’s crackdown, Kasparov moved from Moscow to New York City in 2013.
The US-based Kasparov Chess Foundation non-profit promotes the teaching of chess in education systems around the world. Its program already in use in schools across the United States, KCF also has centers in Brussels, Johannesburg, Singapore, and Mexico City. Garry and his wife Daria travel frequently to promote the proven benefits of chess in education and have toured Africa extensively.
Kasparov has been a contributing editor to The Wall Street Journal since 1991 and is a regular commentator on politics and human rights. He speaks frequently to business and political audiences around the world on technology, strategy, politics, and achieving peak mental performance. He is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Oxford-Martin School with a focus on human-machine collaboration. He’s a member of the executive advisory board of the Foundation for Responsible Robotics and a Security Ambassador for Avast Software, where he discusses cyber security and the digital future. Kasparov’s book How Life Imitates Chess on strategy and decision-making is available in over 20 languages. He is the author of two acclaimed series of chess books, My Great Predecessors and Modern Chess. Kasparov’s 2015 book, Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped is a blend of history, memoir, and current events analysis.
Kasparov’s next book is Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins. (May 2017) It details his matches against Deep Blue, his years of research and lectures on human and machine competition and collaboration, and his cooperation with the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford. He says,
“AI will transform everything we do and we must press forward ambitiously in the one area robots cannot compete with humans: in dreaming big dreams. Our machines will help us achieve them. Instead of worrying about what machines can do, we should worry more about what they still cannot do.”
Attachments:
20130904_kasparov_0111_Edit_1363-4-1-768x979.jpg [ 77.5 KiB | Viewed 2706 times ]
Joined: May 2002 Posts: 16174 Location: Florida
Thanks: 3495 Thanked: 1327 times in 1046 posts
Gender: Country:
Re: About Gary Kasparov
Please feel free to add to this thread any info you find about our author, Garry Kasparov. If you find interviews or YouTube videos please don't be shy about sharing them.
Joined: Oct 2005 Posts: 5832 Location: Canberra
Thanks: 2289 Thanked: 2217 times in 1675 posts
Gender: Country:
Re: About Garry Kasparov
Hi Chris, great selection. I have bought Winter is Coming and read Kasparov's long wikipedia page, which is an astounding record of application of genius chess logic to politics.
Kasparov and I were born within three weeks of each other. Having recently focussed so much on Russian politics through The Master and Margarita, it is clear to me that Kasparov is like Bulgakov in his presentation of a conservative intellectual perspective that I greatly admire. The problem in Winter is Coming of explaining who lost Russia should be a bit like the American debate over China in the 1950s,
I have got back into chess over the last few years, now playing at chess.com with a 1744 rating. Somehow I lost interest in chess from about 1982, after playing all the time at school, so did not follow Kasparov's career closely, although my original interest in chess arose from following the great Fischer Spassky World Championship in Reykjavik in 1972, and then I also followed the Karpov-Korchnoi games with all the politics there.
Joined: Jul 2002 Posts: 2104 Location: Cincinnati, OH
Thanks: 81 Thanked: 787 times in 609 posts
Gender: Country:
Re: About Gary Kasparov
I like chess a lot, but don't play it very often, mainly because at a certain point it seems memorizing chess openings is required to improve substantially. Many top rated players have memorized dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of complete games. I'm not willing to do that, so I mainly study puzzles and follow current championship and classic games...
Joined: Jun 2012 Posts: 1032 Location: Texas
Thanks: 455 Thanked: 461 times in 363 posts
Gender: Country:
Re: About Gary Kasparov
I played football in high school (don't worry, the relevance is coming). Our games were on Friday night, and our coach would tell us to go home an take it easy until game time. Several of the team would gather at my house and we would play (you guessed it) chess. I have played off and on ever since; the most recently with my granddaughters (the oldest one beats me almot every time). Looking for some possible opponents here in my apartment complex.
_________________ Love what you do, and do what you love. Don't listen to anyone else who tells you not to do it. -Ray Bradbury
Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it. -Robert A. Heinlein
Joined: Jun 2011 Posts: 5481
Thanks: 1302 Thanked: 889 times in 763 posts
Gender: Country:
Re: About Garry Kasparov
Quote:
'm embarrassed to say that I don't know how to play chess
It's the easiest game in the world, Chris..
If your color is red, you try to jump as many of your opponents black pieces as you can. If your color is black, you try to jump as many of your opponents red pieces as you can.
Joined: Oct 2005 Posts: 5832 Location: Canberra
Thanks: 2289 Thanked: 2217 times in 1675 posts
Gender: Country:
Re: About Gary Kasparov
LanDroid wrote:
I like chess a lot, but don't play it very often, mainly because at a certain point it seems memorizing chess openings is required to improve substantially. Many top rated players have memorized dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of complete games. I'm not willing to do that, so I mainly study puzzles and follow current championship and classic games...
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot post attachments in this forum
BookTalk.org is a thriving book discussion forum, online reading group or book club. We read and talk about both fiction and non-fiction books as a community. Our forums are open to anyone in the world. While discussing books is our passion we also have active forums for talking about poetry, short stories, writing and authors. Our general discussion forum section includes forums for discussing science, religion, philosophy, politics, history, current events, arts, entertainment and more. We hope you join us!