Kasparov to play white knight
By Simon Kuper

FT
March 18 2005 20:36

“Yeah, I want to make a short statement,” Garry Kasparov began last
week. “I think it could be sort of surprise for many of you.”
Whereupon possibly the best chess player in history revealed he was
retiring from the game aged 41. Kasparov said that among other things
he wanted to help make Russia a democracy.

In fact the statement wasn’t “sort of surprise”. Eighteen months ago,
when I interviewed Kasparov in London, he was already a political
junkie who knew his chess mind was waning.

We started badly that day when I tripped him on The Strand. Though it
was an accident, he glared at me over his flat boxer’s nose. You did
not want to be across a chessboard from this guy. Later we settled on
the sofas of Home House, a mansion on Portman Square, where Kasparov
drank Earl Grey tea and talked in a rapid-fire English marred only by
a Russian tendency to mislay articles.

He told me his mental powers were waning. “Absolutely! Obviously
you’re losing concentration with age.” It didn’t seem to bother
him. Already he was turning his energies elsewhere. While remaining
the world’s number one in chess, Kasparov followed politics so
minutely that he could profile individual Moldovan politicians.

But when talking politics, he kept using the phrase “the big
picture”. Chess helped him see the big picture, he said. “In chess if
you make the wrong assessment of the big picture you are wiped out.”
Most politicians, though, couldn’t see the big picture. They got
distracted by detail.

What exactly did Kasparov mean by “big picture”? “The big picture is
the Middle East conflict, European constitution, Russia. It’s not
Africa.”

Further probing revealed that “the big picture” entailed seeing the
world as a sort of chessboard. The issue wasn’t losing the odd
pawn. It was winning the game. “The freedom”, as Kasparov called it,
played with white. Facing it across the board was dictatorship:
communism, fascism, Islamic fundamentalism. To win, you had to crunch
lots of data, as in chess.

In short, Kasparov sounded like a neo-conservative. He said: “I am a
scientist, a political scientist. I cannot be a politician because I
am not flexible.” And, he might have added, because he struggles to
hide his impatience with us humans.

I asked how growing up in Baku had shaped his thinking. “Everything I
learned from my relatives was very non-complimentary for communism,
and I had very lively brains. I could absorb the information. So I was
already involved in political debate, but at very passive level,
because I had to fight for my chess survival, I had to be officially a
good boy, and I had some strange views that eventually Russia could
change.”

Did he still believe that? The problem now, he said, was that Vladimir
Putin’s people couldn’t leave the Kremlin because they had used it to
enrich themselves. If they lost power, they would lose their
businesses.

Soon after this interview Kasparov helped found the liberal Free
Choice 2008 committee, which aims to oust Putin’s people in the next
elections. Despite being a half-Jewish Armenian born in Azerbaijan, he
had wedded himself to Russia’s future.

“Look, it’s still my house,” he sighed. “I’m not a big fan of Moscow
climate, I was born on the seaside. But you don’t select your
country. If you have any hopes of having impact on the life of your
country, you must stay there. At some point I established the
principle: I will leave the country only if I’m forced.”

The question is how much impact a mere chess genius can have in
contemporary Russia. A Mexican soap star might do better. Do
Muscovites still play chess in the park? “No, it’s definitely not a
national habit any more, because country’s busy. People are busy
making money. Now there’s too much information available, so it’s:
‘Who cares?’ It’s no longer Kasparov playing Karpov. It’s no longer
the match of utmost importance.”

At the end we talked chess. What had been Kasparov’s zenith? “Probably
my best day was this second simultaneous match against the Israeli
national team. I beat them 4-0. Four very strong grandmasters, and
each game I played off my original strengths. So I would assume that
this day was the day of my greatness. The masterpiece, you know,
needs hand of God. I remember certain games I played in my life, great
games, and I was very, very ecstatic before the game. I sensed that
there’s a great energy. Unfortunately it was some time ago.”

He said he hoped people would remember him. They will, but probably
only for his chess.