Kasparov

My Greatest Predecessors
Key Ideas

An inseparable link between chess and surroundings:

- Famous French composer Francois - Andre Philidor: “The pawns are the soul of chess”.
(Do we not hear in this the echoes of the coming Great French Revolution?) (p.5)
- 19th century chess romantic Adolf Anderson led with his style of reckless attacks on the
king, with mind-boggling sacrifices, personifying the Triumph of Mind over Matter.
(Fully typical of an educated German, and not alien to the ideas of Hegel and
Schopenhauer) (p.5)
- American Paul Morphy who, during late 1850s, revealed a thunderous blend of
pragmatism, aggression and accurate calculation to the world.
(Qualities that enabled America to accomplish a powerful spurt in the second half of the
19th century) (p.6)
- A native German, Emanuel Lasker was the only player (unbeatable 27 years) of his time to
appreciate the importance of psychological factors, while being an excellent tactician and
strategist. Lasker was a Doctor of philosophy and mathematics with deep knowledge of
human psychology.
(Who at that time (late 19th and early 20th century) were the masters of thinking? Einstein
and Freud!) (p.6)
- Wilhelm Steinitz with his scientific methods of strategy and theoretical positional play.
(During the periods of increasing rise of Scientific thinking in late 19 th century)
- More on the following (p.7 on) pages:
(Botvinnik, a cold, merciless style based on deep opening and psychological preparation,
serious scientific and professional preparation- a symbol of the might of the Stalin regime?)
(Mikhail Tal, whose victory over Botvinnik was the triumph of a restless poet over a cold
materialistic technician: the personification of Soviet society, with its youth and optimism,
after the darkness of Stalinism)
(Tigran Petrosian, with his difficult childhood, sober prudence and enormous natural talent,
had the qualities of conformism, reticence, caution and discretion; the qualities which
gradually took over the communist ideals during the “early Brezhnev” era)
(Boris Spassky … spectacular attacker and actor on the chess stage, bold and independent
person with unprejudiced worldview and commentary. With his dissident behavior, no
specific will to power, he was a reflection of the growing hostility of the post-Stalin
generation)
(Robert James Fischer … the contemporary of individualists, individual freedom.)
(Anatoly Karpov… Corruption, stagnation, cynicism and conformism were typical features
of Soviet reality, and the world crown matches (between Korchnoi and Karpov showed that
the free world, even after accepting the coexistence of the two systems with some double
standards, was not able to withstand the heartless might of the Soviet machine)
(Gary Kasparov … beating Anatoly Karpov in 1985, the change of the old Chess thinking,
during the first year of Gorbachev’s Perestroika and change of the old system)
(Vladimir Kramnik … the height of pragmatism, a quant synthesis of the psychological
insight of Lasker, the deep opening preparation of Botvinnik, and the extraordinary tenacity
of Karpov (keeping his games as a bedside book))