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Chess Master Kasparov To Retire
fembots writes "Former world champion Gary Kasparov has announced that he is to retire from competitive chess. The chess grandmaster, a leading critic of Mr. Putin, heads a group of top Russian liberals who have joined forces to keep Vladimir Putin from staying in the Kremlin after 2008."
That's okay, because Kasparov 2.0 is coming out and it's gonna whip IBM's hairy blue ass.
Table-ized A.I.
Damn, I guess now Deep Blue will need to find a new friend to play with?
I think, therefore I am. I think?
"Liberal" here refers to the classical liberals opposing monarchies and arbitrary power. Not the socialist version of the word "liberal" we have in the US.
He had first planned his retirement at age 8, the man can plan ahead I tells ya.
IIRC, Deep Blue has already been retired. After their first win, IBM decided they already got enough PR value out of it, and besides Kasparov's team accused IBM of bending some of the rules. Future games may have been tougher for blue if more restrictions were placed on it.
Table-ized A.I.
What an interesting match we are going to witness:
The "Chess master" vs. "the KGB master"
All those sports injuries from playing chess has forced Kasparov to retire.
oh wait.....
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
If his main point is to retire to promote his politics and ensure a head of state does not get re-elected (as the linked, BBC news blurb suggests), shouldn't he realize, just by looking at last year's U.S. elections, that a dissenting, political group spearheaded by a celebrity is a big fucking waste of time.
I mean, this dude only played chess. He never did stand up comedy or married Susan Sarandon. Come on Gary, at least make a documentary where Putin plays Chess instead of going after terrorists.
porp
Here is a link to a more lengthy article with more information, including a video clip. Seems Kasparov, despite still having the best rating in the world, is retiring out of frustration with the FIDE. He's going to write a few books, including How Life Imitates Chess, in addition to politics.
Qxe4
Yes, he's just resting but yet he has the top rating in the chess and many consider him as the greatest player in the world. He is in a good shape and although he has lost his last game in the Linares tournament, but has won the tournament.
Chess like any other game/sport needs sponsors, fans and supporters and Kasparov has been a great name attracting many. His mere presense in a tournament would mean big support and big moneys for Chess. Other active Grandmasters, though not very far from him in theory, could not yet attract so much publicity, support and money to Chess. So I think to the Chess world, his retirement is a very sad news.
Once you become a grand master at chess, does it help or hurt your chances with women when you tell them?
I actually played Kasparov along with about 20 others at the same time as part of a school chess program. Smart man. He beat us all, of course. Best wishes for the future.
garble
I have always admired Gary Kasparov and the things he has done for the chess world, I never really enjoyed playing through someone's else games until I saw his.
There was a time I really wanted to be a great chess player. I would go to bed at night and stay up thinking of moves from games I had played earlier in the day. It would frustrate me to see so clearly what I should have done in certain situations, and aggravate me that things became so obvious after the fact. Sometimes I would go to sleep and dream of games that never even happened, and was really having trouble with the role the game was playing in my life.
Found a book of translated interviews with grandmasters at a used bookstore and it straightened me out. Rosendo Balinas was a prude and never struck me as a real human being. Bobby Fisher was just indominatable and I had trouble relating to him. Kasparov, on the other hand, was kind of a playboy. He had real interests outside the game and saw the relation between what he was doing on the table and what political organizations did throughout the world. He talked about the 'chessbrain' syndrome and how he learned to turn it on to new things.
Long story short: I read about Kasparov, studied Kasparov, tried to walk and talk like Kasparov. Doing so helped me become an easier person to be around. Eventually got laid, had a kid, took an interest in things outside chess.
M
Kasparove has long been a very well known and influential figure in Sowjet/Russian politics. In the sowjet area he was one of the best known critics of the system and a champion of democracy, so he already has political standing. (Btw., him being opposed to the system and Karpov very much being part of the system was one of the things that really spiced up all of their duells then.)
Now on to Putin. It's not only about Putin getting reelected, but about Puting changing the constitution/breaking the law to be able to get reelected. Like in the US the President can only be reelected so many times and Mr. Puting will not be allowed to run again in the next election. However, there are many that fear that Putin will somehow find a way to circumvent this "little inconvenience" and run nevertheless, or at least find an other way to stay in control.
This would very clearly deal the deathblow to what is left of democracy in Russia nowadays and fighting against this happening certainly is a noble cause and should be commended.
Finally, not that I'm really a good chess player, but it is sad to see a giant like Kasparove step down. He will be missed by everyone interested in chess I'm sure.
They gave Deep Blue "take backs", because otherwise he'll have a tantrum and upset the board. Who knew emergent behavior would be such a pain in the ass?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Unfortunately, Kasparov in real life is also into history, and rather close to crackpot science. For instance, he doesn't believe there was 1000 years between the Roman empire and Newton, he thinks history has been artificially expanded by 1000 years.
See e.g. http://www.world-mysteries.com/garrykasparov.htm.
I also vaguely remember that he tried to form a political party after the fall of the USSR, and was voted down as chairman on the first day of his own party! Add to that all the political problems that always surrounded him in the chess world (PCA, FIDE, etc), and I think he's not all that much better than them at politics.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
I'm curious to see if Kasparov will continue to be involved with Advanced Chess, a new form of chess which he introduced. Basically, in it a human and computer program compete as a team against other human-computer teams. This symbiosis is much stronger than either member alone, as humans and computers are better at different aspects of chess. It's thought that Advanced Chess tournaments may help further human-computer interaction.
With his retirement, he's delivered the final blow to the unification plan. The only way a new champion would've gotten credibility was by defeating Kasparov. Now that he's out, I'm sure there's going to be another mess around the championship cycle. But it's understandable he got fed up with FIDE, and called it quits.
Anyway, he ended his career with a bang, winning in Linares. Too bad it's over, I'm sure he could've had a much longer career than Korchnoi.
I just wonder, who the candidates for WCH are now...Anand, Kramnik, Leko? Topalov sure want his share now, that he's tied with Kasparov at Linares.
Heh. You don't see marxist liberals in America. The "fringe" is people like Nader, who don't advocate getting rid of corporations, just regulating them. There is an enormous leap from that to "dictatorship of the proletariat". The thing that pisses me off most about American politics is that certain people have managed to replace the rich and varied sphere of political ideologies with a few token carictitures, and have engaged in such a war on names that we are left without any vocabulary with which to intelligently discuss politics.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
"I will continue to play chess because it is a lot of fun, but no longer on a professional level," he said.
Like he's going to find any "normal" people to play more than once...
Ydco co
Anyone born in the Soviet union could become a Russian citizen with relative ease. Besides, I am sure he was already spending much of his time in Russia before the breakup of the soviet union. Also Baku was a fairly cosmopolitan city before the break up of the soviet union with very large Armenian and Jewish communities living in it. After break up of the soviet union, most of the Jews left to Israel and nearly all of 200.000 Baku Armenians had been forced to leave Azerbaijan because of government sponsored pogroms against them. And I don't see why the ethnicity should be a factor that determines whether someone should or should not involve in politics in such a diverse country as Russia. It might not be well known outside but in many parts of Russia there are fairly large numbers of Ukrainians, Jews, Georgian, Armenians, and others living there (in addition to minorities native to Russian therritories such as those from north caucasus.)