Anatoly Karpov

Mm-hmm.

And he played against Karpov multiple times, and Karpov was, like, the golden child of Soviet chess in the s- 1970s.

Mm-hmm.

He was supposed to play Fischer.

It was supposed to be Fischer who won it in '72 against Karpov, the new Soviet star, but we know Fischer kind of, uh, fell off the map a little bit after that and quit chess and so on, and-

He said he wouldn't play him, and then Karpov won the title without playing.

Yeah, it was, like, vacant.

It was, like, stripped from...

His second bought him less than two.

In 1984, Anatoly Karpov played Garry Kasparov for the World Chess title.

The first player to win six games would take the title.

Draws didn't count toward the six.

So, and then when Fischer won this match against Spassky and, and broke the hege- hegemony of Soviet chess school.

So they needed a hero, and they found Anatoly Karpov.

So that's, is the actually Russian, ethnic Russian from Ural.

And so that's, that's how he became a big symbol So that's why I, you know, as a half Armenian, half Jewish boy from Baku, I had to challenge Russian champion.

... during the perestroika, so that's to be- to, to...

It actually almost made me a hero of a change.

Because if, if Kasparov, uh, could beat Anatoly Karpov, uh, in a chess match, that meant for many, uh, that's the, the even Soviet regime could somehow change.

Um, so in 1990, I already enjoyed, you know, I was world champion five years, so I enjoyed my immense popularity, so I, I had financial resources obviously.

It is often said of Garry Kasparov that his intellectual abilities are so strong that they have enabled him to conquer two worlds as world chess champion and democracy champion.

Kasparov became the youngest world chess champion at age 22 in November 1985 when he defeated his longtime rival Anatoly Karpov.

He lost an important match to a computer called Big Blue, which has implications for the future of technology and artificial intelligence.

Kasparov dominated the game until March 2005 when he retired to become a politician and democracy proponent, becoming a leading opponent of autocratic systems, especially Vladimir Putin in Russia.

During the Soviet era, it was a state sponsored activity.

This led to a famous rigorous training system that produced a dynasty of world champions, including Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov.

Steve talks to Oscar about his mother.

Моя мама преподает шахматы.

30 minutes of reviewing his openings on an incredible site called Chessable.

In another hour... going through one of the 100 best games of a guy named Anatoly Karpov, one of the all-time great chess grandmasters who played with a style that's like Emerson's, which I'm told is very positional and systematically suffocates his opponents like an anaconda.

Now, I poked my head into his office to celebrate his hard work.

He was working on a puzzle.

I have to guess all of his moves.

It really feels like, oh, I played against Karpov the other day.

Like when you try to guess Kasparov's moves, of course you can't guess them all, but even, you know, doing 70% correct gives you confidence as well, which you can transfer better to the actual games.

So definitely more active approach than most people do, I would say.