On life after Kasparov

As hard as we tried to avoid it on occasion, we couldn’t help writing about Garry Kasparov.

His fierce determination to win, his dynamism at the chessboard, his outsize role as a force in chess politics, his oxygen-draining charisma for more than two decades as the face of top-level chess to the outside world — all come flooding back as we digest the announcement by Russian former world champion Kasparov in Spain last week that he was giving up professional chess at the age of 42.

Kasparov explained he felt no more challenges in competition and was frustrated by the inability of rival chess factions to organize a new world-championship cycle. Still the world’s top-rated grandmaster and still perhaps the strongest player the game has ever known, Kasparov would desperately love to reclaim the classical title he lost to Russian rival Vladimir Kramnik in 2000.

The former champ said he wanted to devote much of his time to his political activities back home, where he is a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin’s and perhaps the most famous of Russia’s embattled band of political liberals.

For the chess world, there is both bad and good in Kasparov’s decision.

The bad — the tragic — is all the games the world will never get to see. As he proved in his win over yet another elite field in Linares, Kasparov is still the chess jungle’s alpha male, a combination of intense preparation, over-the-board imagination and a will to win that his top rivals cannot match.

A string of pretenders — England’s Nigel Short, India’s Viswanathan Anand, Hungary’s Peter Leko and a passel of younger Russians — have challenged Kasparov’s dominance, but none has come close to supplanting him. Kramnik has his title, but Kasparov remains the planet’s best and most-feared player.

Chess also loses a magnetic ambassador, a multimedia star with a column in the Wall Street Journal. Just one of Kasparov’s matches with computer programs such as Deep Blue got more ink and air than all of FIDE’s sad world-title knockout tournaments put together.

The silver lining is that a huge obstacle in the road to a more rational chess world has suddenly been removed.

Putting aside who is at fault, efforts to reunify the chess world have always foundered on the question of how to accommodate Kasparov. His feud with FIDE has drained any legitimacy from the organization’s world title, and negotiations for a candidates’ cycle with Kasparov for Kramnik’s crown always seem to come up short.

Kasparov’s huge shadow also has stunted the growth of a generation of younger players, who may emerge now. We’ll see.

In the eternal search for the “next Garry,” today’s first game features GM Artyom Timofeev, who earlier this month won Russia’s under-20 championship in Nojabrsk. In his win over GM Igor Kurnosov, Timofeev shows a Kasparov-like ability to weave his way through a tactical minefield to victory.

Both players strive for a wide-open game in this Ruy Lopez Bogolyubov, though Timofeev as White sidesteps one particularly wild idea that Kasparov would have loved: 14. Nxd4!!? (instead of the game’s 14. Ng3) Bxd1 15. Nxc6, although it looks only equal on 15…Nxe4! (15…Qe8? 16. Nxe7+ Qxe7 17. Nxf6+ Qxf6 18. Bxf6 Bxb3 19. Be7 Be6 20. Bxf8 is great for White) 16. Nxe7+ Kh8 17. Ng6+ hxg6 18. Bxd8 Bxb3 19. Rxe4 Raxd8 20. axb3 Rd2 21. h3 Rxb2 22. Rxa6 Rxb3 23. Rc6.

But White does rise to the challenge on 23. Qd3 Qf5 24. g4!?, aiming at the queen-bishop battery on the b1-h7 diagonal at all costs.

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