Gary Kimovich Kasparov was born on April 13, 1963 in Baku, the capital of the Russian republic Azerbaidzhan. His parents were Kim Moiseyevich Wainshtein and Klara Shagenovna Kasparova. He is of Armenian and Jewish heritage. His early success at the chessboard earned him an invitation to study under the tutelage of Mikhail Botvinnik, the world champion in 1948-1957, 1958-1960, and 1961-1963 and at the time considered to be the USSR’s greatest player. Kasparov has always acknowledged two major influences in his Chess career: Alexander Alekhine and Mikhail Botvinnik, two former great world champions. “The future of Chess lies in the hands of this young man”, Botvinnik wrote prophetically when Kasparov was only eleven years old. He won the USSR junior championship at age thirteen. By the time Gary was 16, his reputation in the Soviet Union and the East had grown to the point that he could no longer expect to enter tournaments unnoticed. The young “Garik”, as he was known in Russia, was now seen as a formidable competitor by many older and more experienced players, both inside the USSR and internationally. He was given an opportunity to play in a Yugoslav event that included 14 strong International grandmasters. Although he had yet to even receive an FIDE rating, Kasparov won the match by a comfortable margin (111/2 to 91/2 for second place), and firmly established himself as a serious contender for a future world championship. He qualified as an International GM in 1980 at 17 years old and two years later he was the second strongest player in the world.

At the age of 21, Kasparov played for his first world title against the legendary Soviet player Anatoly Karpov. Both men played brilliant Chess throughout the event, but after 6 months and 48 games, the match ended inconclusively. Citing exhaustion on the part of both players, World Chess Federation President Florencio Campomanes suddenly cancelled the match without crowning a winner.

The next year the match was replayed, and Kasparov beat Karpov to win his first world championship, a title he has held for 15 consecutive years. From 1984 to 1990, Kasparov played Karpov four times for the world title. After the cancelled first match that let Karpov to retain his world championship crown, Kasparov won three in a row. Kasparov successfully defended his crown in 1993 against Englishman Nigel Short, and again in 1995 by defeating the rising young Indian star Viswanathan Anand.

Gary Kasparov, the 13th world champion, after a long term friction with the International Chess Organization, splits with FIDE to form PCA. He was stripped of FIDE title in 1993. Gary Kasparov and Nigel Short created in 1993 a rival Organization: The Professional Chess Association (PCA). On February 17, 1996, in Philadelphia, Gary Kasparov rose from a Chess table full of triumph and glory.

He has just defeated IBM’s Deep Blue super-computer in the six and final game of a head to head battle that was depicted as the ultimate test of man vs. machine. The humans had won by a score of 4-2, but it wasn’t even that close. Gary Kasparov, perhaps the greatest Chess champion of all time, had demonstrated a command of strategy far beyond the machine’s crunching brute-force tactics.

Deep Blue could assess 100 million positions per second, but it lacked the sensitivity needed to grasp the subtlety of position play, the hallmark of true mastery. On May 11, 1997, in a very different scene, new and improved Deep Blue outlasted and finally conquered Kasparov in the rematch of the century by a score of 3.5 - 2.5. On October 22, 1999 Kasparov defeated the world through the Internet in 62 moves after four exciting months of contest.

On Sunday October 8, 2000 the PCA world Chess championship between Gary Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik began with a 16-game match which took place in London, England and ended on Nov. 2, 2000 with a great performance from 25 year old Vladimir Kramnik of Tuapse, Russia. Kramnik won the match by 8 - 6, ending the 15 year long reign of Gary Kasparov. Prize money was $2,000,000 US. Game 16th was cancelled.

Chess legend Gary Kasparov, matched wits with the Israeli-programmed computer Deep Junior, a three-time world champion, which won the last official world Chess championship for computers in July 2002, in Maastricht, Netherlands against 18 other machines. Kasparov is regarded as the greatest player in history and Deep Junior -- which hasn’t lost to a human in two years -- is billed as the world champion computer.

The six games match were played over a two-week period beginning Jan. 26 and ending Feb. 7, 2003 at the New York Athletic Club. Final score was 3-3. Kasparov has written four books and has gained international recognition as a prominent spokesman for political, educational and social reforms in Eastern Europe.

He is also active in charity and has created the Kasparov Foundation in Moscow (the first private foundation since the revolution) to handle this side of his activities. Kasparov is active in promoting the use of Chess in schools as an educational subject and has set up the Kasparov International Chess Academy.