Garry Kasparov: 1989 Playboy Interview

Chess is a strange, strange game. It's played on nothing more complicated than a regular checkerboard. A child can learn the movement of the pieces in a few minutes and the full rules of the game (a good deal simpler than, say, Monopoly) within an hour. The object of the game is as straightforward as football, kick the can or capture the flag: two armies, one black, one white, each trying to beat the other. Nothing to it.

Nothing to it, but just start trying to consider all the moves and the countermoves that will enable your army to beat the other guy's. The complexities go spinning off into mathematical infinity. One baffled mathematician estimated the number of possible moves and combinations in the average chess game as roughly equal to all the atoms in the universe.

Chess is and will always be the king, the emperor, the noblest of all games. Neither bridge nor go, nor Mastermind nor any of the fads will ever be able to supplant it. The skills required in chess—art, science and war—have fascinated and maddened great minds since its obscure invention in India (some say Persia) in the Sixth or Seventh Century. Napoleon, Castro, Lenin and a host of other, more savory figures of history were chess players, and doubtless many of them took inspiration for their geopolitical policies from the game itself.

Even played strictly on a board, however, chess can prove dangerous to the player who becomes addicted. Tales of chess-induced insanity are endless. American's Paul Morphy swept through the game like a firestorm in the mid-19th Century, easily wiping out everyone who stood in his path, then quit at the height of his glory and ended his days wandering the streets of New Orleans, mumbling to himself. Prague's Wilhelm Steinitz, a world champion, tried to get in touch with God and challenge Him to games, offering Him odds of pawn and move (the black king's bishop pawn is removed from the board; white makes the first two moves). When some well-intentioned doctor at the famous Bedlam madhouse thought it would be good therapy for his inmates to play a chess match, he issued a challenge to the Oxford University team. Guess who won? Bobby Fischer, the genius from Brooklyn, perhaps the greatest chess player ever, smashed all his opponents, as Morphy had, with contemptuous ease. But after a short reign as world champion in 1972, he simply went off to California and hid. He hasn't played chess since and hasn't come out of hiding. Fischer is to chess what Howard Hughes was to aeronautics.

Since 1985, the chess champion of the world has been a muscular, darkly handsome Soviet named Garry Kasparov. Among his more dazzling accomplishments may be the fact that he is so resoundingly sane. Half-Armenian and half-Jewish (born Garri Weinshtein, he took his mother's maiden name after his father died when he was seven), Kasparov was born and raised in the Caspian seaport city of Baku, where they take high-grade crude oil from the seabed and black caviar from the bellies of sturgeon. He began playing serious chess at the age of six and today, 20 years later, is seriously challenging Fischer's reputation as the strongest player in history. Some say he's already there. One English critic calls him the Napoleon of chess and another grand master, who had the sobering experience of playing against him, "a monster with a hundred eyes who sees everything."

Kasparov, the swarthy southerner, took the title away from Anatoly Karpov, a squeaky-voiced defensive genius who had inherited the title left vacant when Fischer disappeared into the mists of Pasadena. Karpov was just the kind of champion that Soviet rulers of the Brezhnev era wanted: well behaved, obedient, a party member with pure Russian genes and a holder of the Order of Lenin. And for several years, he seemed unbeatable; then along came young Kasparov, knocking over his opponents like bowling pins in every elimination match until he sat down to face Karpov in 1984. It was fire against ice. Vastly more experienced, Karpov took a huge early lead by playing parry and thrust to Kasparov's fervent attacks; but the boy from Baku clawed his way back into contention in what was to become the longest and most exhausting championship match in history—more than five months. Panicked, the Soviet chess authorities leaned on the president of the International Chess Federation and persuaded him to simply cancel the rest of the match. White with fury, Kasparov swore revenge. He got it the following autumn, when he clobbered Karpov and became, at 22, the youngest champion ever.

Ever since, the Soviet authorities have been trying to figure out how to deal with their new national sensation. On the one hand, he is terrific propaganda material for the superiority of the Soviet chess machine; on the other, he is an outspoken opponent of the Marxist-Leninist system. He is also a permanent headache to the Soviet sports establishment, which had always treated its "amateur" athletes like indentured labor, keeping 99 percent of their winnings. Kasparov appeared and announced that he was keeping all his money. Now other top Soviet athletes—hockey and basketball players and tennis stars—are following his lead.

It was at this turning point in the history of both chess and Soviet athletics that Playboy sent Rudolph Chelminski, a veteran foreign correspondent who has owned three chess computers—and smashed two because they usually beat him—to fly to Baku and meet Kasparov at his training camp. His report:

"Garry Kasparov is the most famous citizen of Baku. His car is equally celebrated. The blue Mercedes that he sends to the airport to meet visiting businessmen (deals with the West), chess analysts (the champion's sparring partners) and journalists (he is one of the U.S.S.R.'s few authentic stars) covers the 25 miles to his seaside training camp at just a hair under the speed of light, driving all the lesser herds of Volgas and Zhigulis and Moskviches into the gutters at the imperious sound of the horn operated nonstop by his driver, Kolya.

"The training camp, or sanatori, as it is officially billed at the entrance, is a sprawling collection of low, motel-style buildings facing the Caspian and reserved for the families of the privileged rich. The Kasparov clan—his wife, Masha, his mother, Klara, his two resident chess analysts and his friend and general factotum Kadjar—occupies a large six-bedroom suite spanning the entire top floor of a concrete structure. The champ's computers are in a room by themselves (he has a data base covering all the important recent games of his rivals). The living room is filled with a collection of Western gear brought back from his travels: TV set, VCR, tape recorders, portable phone, electric kettle, tea machine, the works. And over by the balcony, in front of a big thronelike chair, are his tools: a single chessboard and the 32 Staunton-pattern pieces that go with it.

"In the four days I spent with the Kasparovs, the chess set saw a fair amount of play—cousins and friends dropping by, Kadjar in his spare time (he wields a mean bishop), miscellaneous demonstration positions—but never once did I see Garry sit down and seriously push a pawn. It was only logical; after all—who in hell could give him any competition? It would be like sending Nolan Ryan up against little-leaguers.

"For the champion of a sport that has been marked by so many eccentrics and dingdongs, Garry comes across as a remarkably sane and well-balanced guy. Fast-talking (his English is excellent), overflowing with energy and ideas, built like a middleweight fighter, he is a knot of passionate intensity waiting to explode. Since he doesn't smoke, drink nor indulge in any drugs ('What for?' he asked), he releases his energy in physical activities, swimming often in the Caspian and taking high-speed walks around Baku. At a match, of course, he releases his energy in more concentrated form. Watch Kasparov when he walks out onto the stage, sits down and stares at the board: You can almost see the smoke curling out of his nostrils, bright little flames dancing at the corners of his mouth, laser beams flashing from his eyes. 'The ogre' the other chess players call him, and I could see why after a few hours of conversation. He's really an extremely friendly and bright young man, but in his line of work, he takes no prisoners. Don't ever, ever dare say that chess is a game for sissies. Gary Kasparov might eat you and spit out your bones."