Latest Low Blow Against Kasparov

I do pride myself on maintaining a family friendly blog here, but this bizarre incident is too shocking to let pass without notice. Go directly to the YouTube video, since you will have to see it to believe it. Truly surreal and almost funny, until you realize that it is an evil Putin trick. According to Mig Greengard, in a comment on one of his blog posts, this was the work of pro-Putin forces out to discredit Kasparov by making him look like a fool. Mig apparently refused to give this more press, however, by making a separate post, though that would have been helpful.

Note: I have corrected my initial post on this subject and hope other bloggers do as well. I have also changed the link. The original video I saw of the event had a misleading translation.

Kasparov's "Life After Chess"

"Life After Chess" is the title of an interview with Kasparov that appears in Newsweek (February 25, 2008). With the death of Fischer (which still receives daily comment in the press) and Kasparov's continued high profile, chess seems quite prominent in the popular press. But as these two giant figures become less central to the game, who will represent chess on the public stage? One of the more interesting exchanges in the Newsweek interview is quite suggestive:

Q: Do you think you're the last chess champion to be well known so broadly?
A: I think it's probably a correct assessment, because chess has changed, you know. It's more like tennis, because the champions are changing too often. If somebody's No. 1, so what?

Reviews of "How Life Imitates Chess"

Carl Schreck's "Game Theory" (online today at Moscow Times website) presents a balanced but ultimately very critical review of Kasparov's How Life Imitates Chess, even calling the former champion a "bad businessman," in apparent reference to the failure of "Kasparov Chess Online" (for which Kasparov himself was hardly to blame). I have read reviews both positive (The Wall Street Journal's "It's Your Move") and negative (The Observer's "He was more fun when he was in the pawn squad"). For those seeking to judge for themselves, BusinessWeek features two excerpts from the book: Garry Kasparov's Endgame and Kasparov's Crisis in Seville. I welcome comments from anyone who has read the book.

Kasparov on Bill Maher

Kasparov's book tour continues, also serving (it appears) as a public relations campaign to solidify Western support behind his bid for the Russian presidency. It almost makes you glad that Kasparov has given up chess, since that means he is more likely to appear on TV. His appearance on Bill Maher's show went much better than his mock-interview with Colbert. But both appearances made me recognize the accuracy of Paul Hoffman's portrait of him in King's Gambit as a pugilistic interlocutor, always out to win an argument--or to turn ordinary conversations into arguments to be won. In this case, it served him well and he ruled the board according to ChessBase, Maher's guests, and even Maher himself. I'm curious to see if he can sustain this level of play into the endgame.

Kasparov on Colbert Tonight (Must See TV)

Garry Kasparov will appear tonight on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report. The former World Chess Champion and Russian presidential candidate will likely use the time to promote his book How Life Imitates Chess, but he will no doubt talk politics with the brilliant fake-conservative talk-show host. BTW: if you do not know Colbert's work, be sure to check out the amazing video of him roasting President Bush (and the press) at the White House Correspondents Association dinner.

"The Tsar's Opponent" in The New Yorker

For those who wonder about the status of Garry Kasparov's campaign for the Russian presidency, David Remnick's "The Tsar's Opponent: Garry Kasparov takes aim at the power of Vladimir Putin" (The New Yorker, October 1, 2007) makes an excellent and informative read. I am always intrigued by the way that chess becomes conflated with politics (see here, here, and here for instance), and Remnick's analysis is often quite astute in this regard. I was especially struck by the following aside about the way that chess championship matches are always mapped onto concurrent political situations in the public imagination:

Like heavyweight championship bouts, matches for the world chess championship have a way of taking on political meaning. Bobby Fischer’s psychodramatic match with Boris Spassky in Iceland, thirty-five years ago, was a Cold War epic (of a particularly neurotic type). In the popular press, it was not enough to say that Spassky failed to contend with Fischer’s brilliant and unpredictable openings; more comprehensibly, it was a triumph of American ingenuity over a sclerotic Soviet bureaucracy.

In 1984, when Kasparov made his first bid for the world title, the political drama was purely Soviet. The regime was in its last year before perestroika. Konstantin Chernenko, a career apparatchik, directed the imperium from his sickroom. His senescence was a symbol of the regime. The market stalls and store shelves were bare. The technological age had arrived—but not in the Soviet Union. Karpov, the world champion, was an exemplar of the Brezhnev-Andropov-Chernenko “era of stagnation,” an obedient member of the nomenklatura. As a player, he was a defensive artist, whose style, like Kutuzov’s in war, was to absorb and smother attacks and then destroy his confounded opponent. Like Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, he was a living symbol of official Soviet achievement.

Kasparov represented a new generation. At twenty-one, he was ironic, full of barely disguised disdain for the regime. He was a member of the Communist Party until 1990—his chess ambitions required it—but no one saw him as subservient. Rather, he was cast, in his challenge to Karpov, as a champion of the young and of the outsiders. His chess style was swift, imaginative, daring—sometimes to the point of recklessness. Karpov painted academic still-lifes; Kasparov was an Abstract Expressionist.

The full text of this wonderful article is available online at The New Yorker's website along with a 22-minute audio clip ("His Next Move") from Remnick's interview with the former chess champion.

Life Imitates Chess

There is an intriguing review of Garry Kasparov's How Life Imitates Chess in this week's Times Literary Supplement titled "Garry Kasparov's Deadly Game" by Daniel Johnson. In some ways it is less a review than a reading between the lines to find an explanation for Kasparov's most dramatic life decision: to give up chess for the dangerous game of Russian politics. With his recent arrest (he was released after a $38 fine) and with Putin's approval ratings in the 70 percent range (well over twice those of Bush and Blair), you have to wonder about his chances for success. Yet, as Johnson concludes his review: "this coded manifesto of a book is only the latest sign that his courage at the chessboard has not deserted him in the political arena."

Kasparov vs. Putin

Every week at the club, one of our members asks me when I think former World Champion Garry Kasparov will turn up dead like the many Russian journalists we are hearing about in the news. I hope that never comes to pass, though he is surely risking a great deal. The New York Times has a good story in today's paper titled "Kasparov, Building Opposition to Putin One Square at a Time" (more permanently available in the International Herald Tribune). Kasparov reveals that since the famous incident where he was attacked with a chessboard, he now travels with bodyguards to ward off similar crazy people. But he has a realist's (some might say "fatalist's") view of his chances of surviving an assassin's attack. As he says in the Times piece: "If the state goes after you, there’s no stopping them.”

A student of Botvinnik's, Kasparov has approached chess as he approaches life, with as much objectivity as he can muster. As he says: "I am absolutely objective ... I think we can lose badly, because the regime is still very powerful, but the only beauty of our situation is that we don't have much choice." I continue to be impressed. So long as the regime does not sweep the pieces from the board in anger to end the game, I think Kasparov has the best chance of anyone to win it.