(Photo by Noam
Galai/Getty Images for TechCrunch)
Twelve years ago,
Grandmaster Garry Kasparov announced that he was retiring from the professional
chess scene after winning the 2005 Linares Chess Tournament. Now he's back. The
54-year-old chess legend will be competing at the Chess Club and Scholastic
Center of Saint Louis in the Saint Louis Rapid and Blitz Competition from
August 14-19 this year.
Kasparov has been
keeping himself busy in the past 12 years, learning about artificial
intelligence, getting arrested for protesting against Vladimir Putin, and
criticizing the Trump Administration's close ties to the Russian government
("Vladimir Putin is a strong leader in the same way arsenic is a strong
drink,"
he
tweeted to then-governor Mike Pence in 2016). But the desire to get back
into professional competition never fully left him.
"With a player
like Garry, you can tell he has the itch to play," said Tony Rich,
Executive Director of the St. Louis Chess Club. "So it really didn’t take
a whole lot of convincing."
Ten players will
compete for a total purse of $150,000 in the
Saint Louis Rapid
and Blitz Competition, part of the international
Grand Chess Tour circuit which features
some of the best players in the world. It takes place immediately following
another Grand Chess Tour event, the annual
Sinquefield
Cup, a $300,000 event that will also be held in Saint Louis. There will be
several players participating in both events.
"Being the
newest addition to the Grand Chess Tour, we wanted to take the opportunity of
the Rapid and Blitz Competition to highlight the growth of the Tour," Rich
told Forbes. "What better way
to get that out there than by including the greatest chess player who ever
lived?"
"I told him,
'Garry, you understand it’s rated so there’s some pride and ego on the line,
right?' He said, 'Absolutely.' He was ready to play," Rich continued.
Grandmaster chess
legend Garry Kasparov, left, competes against Grandmaster and 2016 Sinquefield
Cup Champion Wesley So, right, during the Sinquefield Cup Chess Tournament's
Ultimate Moves exhibition match (Nick Schnelle/AP Images for Chess Club and
Scholastic Center of Saint Louis)
Since his retirement
in 2005, Kasparov has kept himself busy. Although he hasn't been playing in
professional tournaments, he has played in a number of high-profile exhibition
matches. He's also been a tireless advocate for chess, helping to promote the game
in a number of ways (including helping the Grand Chess Tour get off the
ground.)
Kasparov is famous
for his 1997 loss to IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer. As a "type of
therapy" over that loss, he just published a book on the subject of
artificial intelligence,
Deep Thinking:
Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins. It's a
book, Kasparov said in a
post
on Medium, that ultimately made him optimistic about the future.
"I make it
clear in Deep Thinking that my loss to Deep Blue was also a victory for humans
— its creators and everyone who benefits from our technological leaps. That is,
everyone," Kasparov wrote. "This is always the case in the big picture,
and why the book rejects the ‘man vs machine’ competition storyline. The
machines work for us, after all. The last third of the book is about the bright
future of our lives with intelligent machines, if we are ambitious enough to
embrace it."
Kasparov has also
been deeply involved in politics in his native Russia. He's been arrested and
detained several times for his activism against the leadership of Vladimir
Putin over the years. He's also
written a book about the
dangers of Putin's global ambitions. (You can also
read
an interview he gave
Forbes warning
about Putin back in 2007.)
Despite this return
to a competitive tournament, Kasparov doesn't plan to leave his writing and
political activism behind to pursue chess on a full-time basis. "My
family, my political activism, speaking and writing, coaching—there is little
time for the dedication serious chess requires and deserves," he said in
an email.
That said, Kasparov
seems excited at the chance to play against the top players in a pro setting -
he got the opportunity to play some of the same players in an exhibition
tournament last year in St. Louis as well. "I'm delighted to have the
chance to return to the chessboard against elite competition in St. Louis.
Rapid and blitz against such a strong field will be by far my toughest test
since I retired in 2005," he said.
Kasparov further
noted that the chess scene in St. Louis is one of the reasons why he
decided to return to competition there.
"Playing in St.
Louis is special, not least because it is a way to say thanks for what the
Sinquefield family has done to promote the game there and worldwide, especially
in education," Kasparov said. "Thanks to the Sinquefields, St. Louis
has become the global chess capital and the atmosphere there is something
approximating the enthusiasm and respect for chess culture back in the Soviet
Union—and you can see that the results are excellent as well. I'm very
comfortable there, and while I have no plans to play elsewhere I hope to do
well enough to honor such a wonderful event with my chess, not just my
name."
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