Chessboss

Garry Kasparov is, perhaps, one of the best known names in chess.  Born in 1963 in what is today Azerbaijan, he started playing chess at the age of 5, and became the Soviet Junior Champion by the age of 12, the youngest player ever to do so.  At the age of 17, he became the World Junior Champion and an International Grandmaster.  At the age of 21, he became ranked the number one chess player in the world, a rank he would hold for the next twenty-one years.  At the age of 22, he became the World Champion, a title he would successfully defend until the age of 35.  He also holds the record as the first person to top the ELO chess rating of 2800, and the record for the highest ever ELO rating, of 2851.

Perhaps his most well-publicized match was the famous battle against IBM’s supercomputer, Deep Blue.  Kasparov and Deep Blue played two six-game matches, one in 1996 and one in 1997.  Kasparov easily won the 1996 match, but lost the subsequent year against an updated version of the program, becoming the first world champion to lose a match to a computer.  Though Kasparov tried to challenge Deep Blue to a third, tie-breaking match, IBM refused, retiring Deep Blue from the world of professional chess.